


Hope's Salvation

by orphan_account



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Hinata Hajime & Kamukura Izuru Share a Body Simultaneously, Identity Issues, M/M, slight retelling of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22670893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Naegi decides that he will save the Remnants of Despair, he does not expect the immediate connection he feels to his predecessor of the title Ultimate Hope, nor to the boy who had been used to create him.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Kamukura Izuru/Naegi Makoto, Hinata Hajime/Naegi Makoto, Kamukura Izuru/Naegi Makoto
Comments: 54
Kudos: 381





	1. Burning Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired initially by that five second scene in DR3 where Naegi goes to HPA and meets Kamukura - the visuals were so lovely. And then I couldn't stop writing. This is my own (very disjointed) take on some of the events of SDR2 - mostly the beginning and the end - and focus on Naegi/Kamu/Hinata.
> 
> Enjoy!

Destruction has spread everywhere around the hollowed out shell of the once great Hope’s Peak Academy. The flora and fauna have died away, leaving only dusty, dirty craters behind. The school’s facade is cracked and faded, as though a desaturated filter had been laid over it, dulling everything that was once filled with life and colour. The air is thick with the lingering smell of death and decay.

Far too many lives have ended in this cradle of hope, soldiers and students alike. They had all believed that with Enoshima gone, the school would no longer be host to Despair, that the spirits of all those who had passed could finally rest in peace.

They were mistaken.

In the effort of fighting the Tragedy, the Future Foundation had put all of its efforts and funding into tracking down and capturing all of the floating Remnants of Despair that Enoshima had created. One by one they were hunted down and cornered, slowly gathered and held in secure areas.

They have hunted down all of them… save for one.

* * *

Naegi rubs his hands together and feels the grit sticking to his anxious sweat. He’s sitting in one of the Foundation’s armoured vehicles next to Kirigiri, drawing on her nearly infinite calm in order to keep his heart from racing.

They’re here without the others’ knowledge. Something about that feels heavy in his stomach, like leaden guilt, but he needs to be here. He knows he does. And after what happened during the killing game, she has always stayed his staunchest supporter. If he says he must go to Hope’s Peak in order to convince the last Remnant to come with them when all other venues of recovering him have failed, then she will facilitate his efforts.

He’s still unsure how she managed to gather a team of soldiers without Munakata or Togami knowing. Maybe Kizakura had helped her. They’d secured some vehicles and arms before setting out to their old school.

Thirty minutes ago a scout team went into the school to check for traps and ensure the presence of the final Remnant. In Naegi’s opinion, it’s far too long. No other strike teams have entered this school, seen the final Remnant, and survived.

Too many have died, so many that Naegi wants to weep. He’ll walk himself into hell if it means even one less person must die.

Kamukura Izuru… His true identity has been difficult to discern. Kirigiri eventually hunted down information about his original self, a Reserve Course student at Hope’s Peak who had submitted himself to experimental surgeries and eventually began aiding Enoshima in her conquest of Despair.

But _why?_ Why did he help her? What was he like before Despair? Before the surgeries?

“Naegi,” Kirigiri says, interrupting his racing thoughts. “Calm down.”

“Y-Yeah. Sorry.”

“The scout team will inform us soon if he’s present or not.”

He’s not sure why they even need to risk their lives. He’s here. He _knows_ it. He’s been here since the hunt for the Remnants started, as though he was broadcasting himself, waiting for Naegi to come.

Is that self-absorbed to think? He doesn’t want to think he’s being too arrogant, but there’s something about it… Perhaps it’s something only mutual Ultimate Hopes can understand. Maybe Kirigiri saw that special something inside of him when she gave him that title.

They wait until one full hour has passed without any contact from the scout team.

“Kirigiri…”

She sighs and opens the door, stepping out. He follows her with a queasy feeling in his stomach, staring up at the building he’d once been so eager to attend. The feeling of awe is still present, but for all of the wrong reasons. Instead of hope, he feels a blunt terror.

The few soldiers who had stayed to protect them turn when they exit the vehicle, saluting Kirigiri and nodding at him so deeply they’re almost bowing. It’s still hard to realize and stomach the fact that people genuinely consider him the embodiment of Hope. He’s just another person. His only real skill is staying positive.

Kirigiri easily commands the attention of everyone when she steps forwards. “Everyone. Naegi will enter the school now.”

The soldiers immediately sort themselves out into two groups - the ones who will remain with Kirigiri and the vehicles, and those who will go with Naegi. He shakes his head.

“No,” Kirigiri says. “He will go in alone.”

A wave of discontent go through the soldiers. Despite his relatively low rank in the Foundation, he is their figurehead. The icon of Hope. If they allow him to die, the ensuing wave of Despair will be on their heads. He wishes not for the first time that he could go back to being the utterly normal, forgettable, boring boy he was before all of this.

“Don’t worry,” Kirigiri says, a near smile in her voice. “This man next to me… is the Ultimate Hope. He won’t die in a place such as this.”

He steps up next to her with the most reassuring smile he can muster. The soldiers still seem reluctant, but they don’t stop him as he walks by them. All they do is salute and watch as he makes his way around the cracked earth into the school’s entrance.

When he reaches the doorway, he turns back. Kirigiri hasn’t moved an inch, arms crossed and face determined. She believes in him. He can see it in her eyes. His will steels again.

He can do this.

The doors open under his hand and he steps into the stale, dusty air of the academy. He can smell the iron in the air of long dead corpses that once lined the hallways from the uprising of the Reserve Course students mixed with the fresh blood of the scouting team Kirigiri had sent ahead of him.

He clasps a hand over his chest to fight against the ache inside of it. If only he had fought harder to go in first.

His footsteps echo hollowly as he makes his way to the next floor up, sternly ignoring the various old stains of blood and the slashes on the walls. After the Foundation had helped them recover their memories, he’d had to take a few days to himself to digest the slaughter that had happened inside of these very hallways.

As he steps into the stairwell leading up to the second floor, he flinches at the sight of fresh blood sprayed across the wall. One of their soldiers, dead, throat cut. He stops to take their dog tags and pray for their soul before moving on. The process repeats four more times until finally he reaches the classroom in which the Remnant is rumoured to haunt. The weight of their deaths hang around his neck like a heavy weight.

Beyond this door, he’ll meet his predecessor, the man who held the title of Ultimate Hope first. Naegi anxiously sweeps hair out of his face, tugging at his bangs, and adjusts his tie.

This is it.

He opens the door to the classroom that once housed class 77-B, the Remnants of Despair. It makes a sound as it opens, clearly alerting Kamukura to his presence, but he doesn’t put any thought into it. Kamukura must have known he was coming anyways.

The dimming evening sunlight casts the room with a warm, golden glow, highlighting the desks and chairs. The room is fairly intact beyond the gaping, cracking holes in the wall, and the debris littering the ground.

Standing by the open wall, by a desk with a clean vase with a still lively looking flower, is Kamukura Izuru.

He’s dressed in a simple black suit, back facing towards the door, towards Naegi. His long hair is blowing the wind, tendrils curling and tangling almost as though they’re living, glowing in the golden light of the setting sun. Then he turns and looks at Naegi and he feels his breath stolen away.

Red eyes gaze coldly at him, strands of black occasionally obscuring his eyes. The gleam of the sun brightens those sharp eyes, until they look as though Kamukura has fire burning inside of them. The trim suit seems to bely the danger coiled in his body, but every hair raises on Naegi’s neck, his very base animal instincts inside of him telling him to turn and run. Every inch of him is utterly entrancing.

He’s inhumanly beautiful.

Kamukura says nothing, simply stares at him with those burning, cold eyes.

It takes Naegi a few long moments to regain himself. The vision of Kamukura burns itself into his eyes, into his mind, carving something permanent into his being. This man is unspeakably dangerous, a killer and a terrorist, but Naegi can’t stop himself from feeling as though he’s looking at a masterpiece of art.

“Hello,” he finally manages, sounding breathless even to his own ears.

Kamukura turns fully to face him, hair curling around him and twisting in the breeze. There isn’t even a speck of blood or dust on him.

Naegi feels the compulsion to say his name aloud. “Kamukura Izuru.”

“Naegi Makoto.”

“You… Are you going to kill me?”

Kamukura frowns. “A pointless question. If I wanted you dead, you would have already been killed before stepping into this classroom.”

Naegi can’t help but huff out a small laugh at that despite the utter lack of humour. “That’s true. You killed a lot of people to keep them out of here, so I guess I should consider myself lucky.” He takes a step further into the room and feels his gaze pulled away from the burning perfection in front of him, towards the vase with the flower. “The person who’s desk that is… Is that supposed to be Nanami Chiaki’s desk?”

Kamukura doesn’t move or respond, but Naegi _feels_ his negative reaction towards that question. He takes it as a ‘yes’.

He’s not sure why Kamukura is here, haunting a classroom and tending to a mourning vase of a girl he ostensibly should not have known. There’s so much about him that Naegi wants to learn.

“You probably already know why I’m here, too.”

“To capture me.” Kamukura slowly tilts his head, burning eyes narrowing. “But… more than that. You’re here for something more. I’ve heard whispers. Rehabilitation.”

Naegi tries very hard not to let the surprise show on his face. He had proposed the rehabilitation plan to the other survivors, Kirigiri and Togami foremost, and had gotten Alter Ego to agree to creating a separate AI to assist. But that information should never have reached beyond their ears. Not even Tengan or Munakata should know of it.

“You cannot hide anything from me.”

He scratches his cheek and then rips his hand back down, remembering Kirigiri’s many lectures about his anxious ticks and hiding them. “Are you… going to stop us?”

Kamukura shakes his head.

“Then will you come back with me?”

“You will regret doing this.”

“Why?”

Kamukura says nothing as he approaches, footsteps utterly silent. Naegi feels his chest tighten in a mixture of fear and some other emotion that he associates with Kirigiri but a thousand times stronger - awe, maybe. Respect. Something startlingly warm. He stops so close that Naegi could reach out and touch him, and he almost does, hand rising as though drawn in magnetically, but he stops himself.

He swallows thickly. “Kamukura… I won’t regret it. I know I won’t. No matter what happens, I would never regret trying to help all of you.”

“There is nothing in me to help.”

“That’s wrong. Everyone… Everyone can be helped. Even someone like you. Don’t you want to go back to who you were before they hurt you?”

It’s still almost impossible to believe that such horrible things happened at Hope’s Peak, that the school he’d once held in such high regard would do something like that to a student who loved hope so much… But that is the truth, and he cannot turn away from that.

Kamukura tilts his head. “You assume I want to return to being that useless person?”

Naegi frowns. “You didn’t say it’s impossible… Which means it’s possible?”

His face stays in it’s coldly neutral expression, but he gets the impression that Kamukura is laughing internally at him and his weak attempt at divining the meaning behind his words. Or maybe he’s just projecting...

“You are so concerned with helping mass murderers that you’ll place your own head under the guillotine in their stead.”

He grimaces at that. It’s true. The Foundation will certainly consider him a criminal for doing this… Togami has already infiltrated the holding cells with men who are loyal to him above the Foundation in preparation to cut and run with the Remnants. The heir had complained constantly even as he secured Jabberwock Island and worked with Kirigiri to find a ship that could transport them all.

Togami is quite difficult at times, but… It deeply humbles Naegi to realize that the stubborn, haughty man respects him so much that he’d willingly enable an insane plan like this.

“I know that I’ll probably be punished for doing this,” Naegi agrees, “but I just can’t stand by anymore. Killing you guys won’t achieve anything except for more bloodshed. I can’t watch any more people die if I can help it. No matter what, I’ll do everything in my power to help you, and I will never regret that.”

“Is that what it means to you, to be the Ultimate Hope?”

“It is.”

Kamukura shuts his eyes and bows his head slightly in acknowledgement. “Then we shall see which of us is correct.”

And with that, he steps around Naegi, and silently walks out of the classroom. Naegi takes a last look at the desk with the flower, sees it as proof that there still is a human being inside of Kamukura. He clenches his hands and reaffirms his decision to rescue the Remnants from themselves.

He steps out of the classroom and finds Kamukura waiting for him.

“Okay. Let’s go then.”

Naegi turns and walks back by the bodies of the soldiers who had died for absolutely no reason at all, feels the barest edge of anger towards the silent man behind him, but he swallows it down. All he has to do is get them to the island and then Alter Ego and the Neo World Program will save them.

As he continues heading back out of the school he feels like Orpheus guiding his love Eurydice out of hell. He can’t hear any footsteps. The urge to look behind him is almost overwhelming but he feels as though he will lose… _something_ if he turns back.

Upon opening the doors of the school, his fears are erased. The shocked looks on the faces of the soldiers and the way they ready their guns is enough proof that Kamukura is still following him. Kirigiri waves at them to lower their guns, and she smiles in relief at him before she schools her expression back.

“Kamukura Izuru,” she greets coolly. “Will you allow yourself to be handcuffed?”

“It doesn’t matter if you handcuff me or not. Nothing will change.”

“Then I’d like to. Please put out your hands in front of you.”

Kamukura obliges, every inch of his body screaming confidence in his ability to escape the cuffs if he so desired to, and Naegi believes he could. Kirigiri does too. This play acting is just to keep the soldiers calm. He feels a small amount of gratitude towards his fellow Hope for allowing them to pretend for a moment that they’re in control.

The cuffs quietly click shut and Kirigiri steps back, motioning for Kamukura to step into their vehicle.

It’s a quiet, tense ride to the docks where their ship is stationed. They can’t bring Kamukura anywhere near the Foundation for fear of someone discovering their plans. Along the way, Kirigiri calls Togami and signals for him to begin the evacuation of the Remnants and rendezvous with them at the docks.

The entire ride, Kamukura sits silently with his eyes closed. If Naegi didn’t know better, he’d even think the man had fallen asleep.

He looks less ethereal without the setting sun highlighting his features. He looks more human. He looks like the boy in the pictures Kirigiri had found in Hope’s Peak’s files. Suddenly it’s not so difficult to see Hinata Hajime inside of Kamukura.

With the Neo World Program, they’ll pull the fragments of that boy back together.

* * *

The freighter groans as it makes its way through the ocean, heading towards Jabberwock Island, the defunct base that the Future Foundation had built and abandoned.

The ocean is one of the few things he does not find immeasurably boring. It moves unpredictably. It contains thousands upon thousands of secrets unknown to mankind, even beyond his own comprehension. Even during this trip, it has managed to excite him by rocking the ship in a manner he did not expect.

He could almost consider it a mildly enjoyable trip, if only…

“What are you thinking about?”

… _if only_ they had not found it fit to trap him in the same room as Komaeda. Always chattering, always annoying. If it were not for the fact that occasionally Komaeda’s Luck could provide him interest, he would have simply refused to be placed with him.

“Are you thinking about the island? Ahah, I wonder how beautiful it will look! I can’t wait! I’m so glad that we’re all on this journey together!”

He wishes he would shut up for once.

“To think that the new Ultimate Hope would go so far for us…” Komaeda shivers and clutches at himself. “It’s so inspiring. I wish that I could speak with him face to face,so that I could tell him how much I admire his hope… I only saw him briefly when we were getting on board, but his shining hope was like a beacon! Utterly amazing!”

Shining hope, is it? Kamukura dislikes the inaccuracy of poetic language, but even he cannot deny the strange glow in the smaller man’s eyes when he’d confronted him in the school. There is something about his presence that intrigues him.

He wonders just which one of them will come out victorious. Which ‘Hope’ will be found correct?

“You met him, didn’t you? What was he like?”

Small. Easily flustered. Naive. Determined. And far, _far_ too unaware of the effect he has on those around him. He could see it in the Foundation’s agents that had been waiting for them outside of the Academy, the idolization in their eyes when Naegi had led him out, the near reverence when Naegi had returned the dog tags of the soldiers Kamukura had murdered.

_“We won’t forget their names or sacrifices. Their memories are still with us, so please… Let’s all keep fighting for them, and everyone else.”_

What an insipid, empty speech. But Naegi believed in his words and that belief had seeped into the others, like an infection. And yet, he doesn't seem to acknowledge his own power. His word could save thousands of lives, or end thousands in the same breath.

He’s their Hope. The embodiment of it. The living incarnation of it in their eyes, just as Enoshima had been the living incarnation of Despair. He wonders if Kirigiri realizes just what she did to him when she gave him that title, what kind of weight she had just placed on Atlas' back. With that title, she had given him a rope, and all that's left is to wait for him to hang himself with it.

For someone who had once claimed the title of Ultimate Luck, Kamukura believes that Naegi has become victim of the worst luck imaginable.

“I’m sure it was amazing. Two Hopes in the same room!” Komaeda shudders. “I can only imagine!”

The sick interest in Komaeda’s eyes irritates him. Perhaps Naegi is not so unlucky after all. He’s avoided being stuck in a room with Komaeda.

“Shut up.”

“Ahah, no need to be so unfriendly! By the way, why did you want us all to obey when the Ultimate Hope and his friends came to retrieve us? Not that I’m questioning you or your decisions, not at all, it’s just -”

“Shut. Up.”

Komaeda laughs gratingly and mimes zipping his mouth shut with Enoshima’s hand.

Kamukura shuts his eyes and allows himself to fall into a meditative state, lulled by the rocking of the ship in the unpredictable ocean waves. They’ll arrive at the island soon, and then… He pictures the USB in his pocket, containing the Alter Ego Enoshima.

Their trial run in Towa City had been as good as could be expected. Her AI had functioned perfectly, learning and reacting, behaving just as chaotically as her living self had been. Her chattering was even more annoying than Komaeda’s…

He wonders what will happen, when he uploads her AI to the Neo World Program. He assumes she will attempt to usurp their bodies by uploading her AI consciousness into their comatose bodies. If so, he already feels annoyed by her predictability. She had promised him a world of chaos, that the chaos would finally interest him, but he still feels plagued by boredom. Nearly everything still happens as he predicts.

Perhaps this fledgling Hope will finally grant him the reprieve from boredom he’s been searching for. After all, even he is not completely sure if the Neo World Program will truly be able to revive Hinata.

And even if it does, will Hinata survive what Enoshima has planned? Will Kamukura and Hinata both perish, having their minds overwritten by Enoshima?

His mouth quirks upwards into an unfamiliar expression.

He cannot _wait._

* * *

They file off of the ship, most of the others blinking in the abrupt sunlight. There’s only a skeleton crew running the ship, and the three survivors who shepherd them - Togami, Kirigiri, and of course the gem in their midst, Naegi.

Some of the others size up the crew. All together, none of them could put up a fight if they went all out. They’re all practiced murderers. Kamukura predicts a near 100% chance that they would decimate the Foundations men, and easily take the three survivors hostage. With Naegi in their possession, the Ultimate Despair would have next to no enemy willing to attack them in fear of killing their precious Hope.

When the Remnants look at him for permission to attack, he shakes his head, and instead turns to follow Naegi who leads them further into the island, flanked by Togami and Kirigiri.

Kuzuryu makes an annoyed sound. He is among the most actively violent of the Despairs, but even he knows his place. With a sharp word to Pekoyama, he stalks after them.

Their macabre parade continues onto the island. It’s nearly idyllic. Blue skies, soft sandy shores kissing the ocean waves, tropical trees and healthy flora lining the pathways. This place is not simply a dumping grounds for them. This is intended to be a semi-permanent home for them. That is how confident they are that they can truly rehabilitate them.

The Neo World Program is a scientific marvel, that he cannot deny. When multiple Ultimate minds come together it’s only natural that they create something as complex as it. However, it was never designed to endure an AI worm attacking it from the inside.

Enoshima always did excel at exploiting unexpected weaknesses.

Kirigiri and Togami both keep one eye behind them, suspicion clear in their eyes. The man between them seems ignorant to their tension, or perhaps is simply choosing to ignore it, turning only once to cast a look over them. They meet eyes.

Kamukura feels a deep compulsion inside of him when Naegi gives him that same stern look of determination. A compulsion to do what, he strangely does not know. It makes excitement build, crackling along his spine.

This... is _exciting._

Who will win? Between himself and Naegi, and between himself and Hinata.

When they finally reach the hub of the Neo World Program, he palms the USB and allows himself to fade into the background, utilizing his Ultimate Secret Agent skills to become nearly unnoticeable. The survivors begin directing the others into their pods. Kamukura finds the main computer and inserts the USB before turning away and allowing himself to be noticed again. By the time they find the new addition, it will be too late. Enoshima will be inside with them.

Her worm will take a few days to examine and learn the inner workings of the program, but she has all of the computing power she’ll need built in.

Kirigiri motions to him, guides him to an empty bed. “Over here.”

Kamukura obediently lays down in his pod upon Kirigiri’s request, feeling Naegi’s gaze on him as he does. The younger Hope comes up to him with those powerful eyes and Kamukura feels the buzz of excitement again. Kirigiri turns away to give them privacy.

“I’m going to prove you wrong,” he says quietly. “We’re going to save you all. Or… maybe to be more accurate, you’re all going to save yourselves. When it’s all done, I’ll expect an apology from you.”

His mouth quirks again, surprising them both.

Naegi blinks rapidly, mouth curling up in response. “Ah! You smiled.”

Interesting. This is all so interesting. This _Hope_ in front of him is so _interesting._ Perhaps he should thank Enoshima after all. Without her, this Hope would never have been born. She had unknowingly but carefully cultivated his budding talent throughout the killing game and granted Kamukura the good luck of meeting him.

He smiles wider, face feeling strange with the new expression.

Naegi doesn’t know the bloodshed that awaits the Remnants he’s so boldly declared he’ll save, doesn’t know the treachery Kamukura has committed. But he smiles back at Kamukura anyways, eyes full of warmth. He reminds him of Nanami.

He leans back, shuts his eyes, and waits to gamble his existence.

Kamukura Izuru.

Hinata Hajime.

Enoshima Junko.

Which one of them will awaken when this is over?

* * *

“Naegi, get some rest.”

He jerks, startled, and guiltily looks over his shoulder at Kirigiri. He’s been up for nearly two days now, jamming as much caffeine into his system as he can with Togami irritably brewing up more and more for him, just so he can stay awake and watch the Remnants inside of their tropical dream.

They look so young. Fresh. Unburdened by death and despair.

The Observer that Alter Ego had programmed had taken the form of Nanami Chiaki. It feels appropriate for her to be reunited with her class in a way, although this isn’t really Nanami and her classmates don’t recognize her anyways.

And Kamukura… Naegi had almost cried in utter joy when the program had booted up and in Kamukura’s place had been Hinata Hajime, with his green eyes and short, spiked hair, dressed in a plain shirt with a patterned tie.

He’s so expressive. At times petulant or irritable, guided along by Komaeda through the surreal personalities of the Ultimate students he’d been grouped with.

His voice is the same, and his face is the same, but there’s something inherently different about him. He stands less confidently, shoulders tight and pulled up, hands occasionally unable to decide if they should be pushed into his pockets or if his arms should be crossed. He talks less exactly, less surely.

Naegi wants to reach in and touch him just to believe he’s real.

Really, he’d been more uncooperative and reluctant to engage with the Ultimates than Naegi had thought he’d be, especially considering that he’d once thrown away his own identity in order to become an Ultimate himself. He supposes that it makes sense, in a way. He doesn’t remember his true identity of being a Reserve Course student. He wonders if that part of him was repressed or removed by the surgery, or if that was a choice on Alter Ego’s end.

Whichever it is, he finds himself unable to pull away from the screens, mesmerized by their carefree attitudes. _This_ is their new reality. Once they wake up, things will be better for everyone.

Maybe, Naegi and Hinata can become friends too.

Even if not… Even if Tengan and the others decide he’s gone too far and arrest him, or even execute him for treason, at least he’ll know that he did the right thing. All he has to do is see Hinata and the others smile and he _knows_ he did the right thing.

Like he promised Kamukura, he won’t regret anything.

He rubs his eyes and feels the grit in them from staring at screens for hours - _days_ \- on end. The coffee in his cup has long since gone cold and he doubts Togami will be willing to make him more. Sometimes he and Kirigiri cooperate on some of the most unlikely of things, and he thinks that forcing him to sleep will be one of those things.

On cue, Kirigiri crosses her arms and tilts her head expectantly.

He sighs and scratches his cheek, feeling like a child being scolded. He’s just opening his mouth to surrender and give in when he hears it.

Hears _her._

Kirigiri’s face goes colder than stone. Togami slams down his own cup of coffee, splashing his sleeve, and snarls. He just feels sick.

_Monokuma._

“Why… is Monokuma there…?” he asks weakly, head spinning a little, hoping against all hope that this is simply a hallucination from lack of sleep. It doesn’t make any sense. This is supposed to be a safe place. No one knew they were coming here, right? So how? How did someone invade their program?

Neither of them answer.

Even Alter Ego seems lost on how this virus entered the Neo World Program. “I’m sorry… All I can think is that it was uploaded here in the control room somehow! I feel so useless… I’m so sorry. I should have noticed sooner.”

Togami curses as Kirigiri immediately begins poking through the computers and wires. Naegi stares in mute horror at the screens as Monokuma details their Killing School Trip. What motives will she create this time? Which of them will die?

That thought cuts into him with a frightening pain.

“Alter Ego, what happens to them if they die in the simulation?”

Alter Ego looks teary eyed. “In the best case scenario, they’ll enter deep comas as a protective countermeasure. But to them, dying will feel utterly real, and their brains may simply cease functioning altogether.”

Naegi shakes his head in denial. That can’t be true. There’s no way… He had led them straight into a trap all while spouting bullshit about saving them.

And if he dies, what will happen to the fledgling copy of Hajime that they had resurrected?

Togami scoffs. “It’s better off this way. If they want to die in despair so badly, just let them.”

“How can you say that?!” he says, feeling dizzy as he spins on his heels. “How can we just let them die here?! After everything we’ve done -”

“ _You’re_ the one who wanted to save them. Not me.”

He feels the burning crawl of anger over his cheeks and up the back of his neck. Sometimes he forgets just how callous of a person Togami can be, how easy it is for him to write off another person’s life.

“Don’t give me that look,” Togami says, countenance softening. “They’ve all committed crimes more terrible than I care to imagine. This is their punishment.”

“Enoshima _hurt_ them. She made them this way! It isn’t fair to punish them for things they didn’t want to do!”

“Want has nothing to do with it. They did those things, and that is fact. No amount of sweet words or therapy is ever going to change that fact. You can’t save everyone, Naegi, and it’s foolish to think you even _should._ ”

Kirigiri interrupts them with a curt, “I found it.”

She holds up a slim USB.

He understands now why Kamukura was so sure that Naegi would come to regret his actions. He had never intended for the Neo World Program to achieve its goals at all.

_“You assume I want to return to being that useless person?”_

“Kamukura…” he says weakly. It had to have been him.

Togami growls wordlessly as he storms around the room towards Kamukura’s pod.

“Togami! I can’t allow you to open that until the simulation has been completed!” Alter Ego says when Togami begins prying at the bed’s door. “If that is opened before they graduate, or before the system is forced to shut down from inside, it would be catastrophic! My programming will not allow them to open, so _please_ stop.”

He slams a fist down on the plexiglass. “They don’t _want_ to be saved. That’s the truth, Naegi. So what will you do now?”

His head is spinning. “Alter Ego… Can you stop her from inside?”

Alter Ego’s miserable expression is enough of an answer.

“So she’s already blocking you from inside…” he says. “Then… Then can… Is it possible for you to get a message through to them somehow? Can we tell them how to escape the simulation? About the emergency shut down?”

Alter Ego thinks for a moment. “It may be possible… This simulation was built with the intent of slowly readjusting them back to normal life, before the Tragedy, but it is possible for them to access some of the backend. There are locations in the simulation that contain information regarding their true identities - that information had to go _somewhere_ after all. It won’t be easy though.”

“With Usami’s powers being nullified, it will be hard to keep them from spiralling into despair,” Kirigiri notes, arms crossed. “We will have to prepare for the possibility that they will begin murdering one another.”

“Inevitability,” Togami corrects.

Naegi shoots him an angry look. He believes in them. He has to believe in them. Under all of that despair had been happy, care-free children, all smiling and playful. And even if he can’t believe in them individually, they still have their second Observer.

“Alter Ego Nanami will help them through this! I’m sure of it!”

“You should know better than most how little one person can do against the panic Enoshima’s motives are designed to cause,” Kirigiri says softly.

“Then, Alter Ego, please do whatever you can to protect their minds if they do die in the simulation!”

Alter Ego nods, determination burning in his eyes.

“And…” This idea is crazy, even to his own mind, but he can’t _not_ say it. “Please find if there is a way for me to enter the simulation as well.”

“Absolutely not,” Togami denies sharply.

“I’ll go in and explain everything. Then… Then no one has to die! I promised I would save them all, so I have to -”

“ _Absolutely not!_ ” Togami shouts. “Think about your own safety for fucking _once!_ ”

He meets eyes with Kirigiri, startles at how strained she looks. Why does she look like that? “You - you’re the one who told me that I am ‘Hope’... I still don’t know if anything we’re doing is the right thing, but I have to… This is something I have to do. I won’t let her win again.”

She looks blue in the face, composure cracking. “I’m the one who told you…” Her voice is fraying.

“You did! That must mean that you believe in me! I can save them! _We_ can save them!”

Kirigiri flinches slightly. Then she shakes herself hard and her calm mask slips back into place. “... I understand.”

“Kirigiri, you -!” Togami snarls. He looks between them with such vitriol Naegi’s surprised he doesn’t spit at them. He slams his fist against Kamukura’s pod again before turning on his heel and storming out of the room.

Alter Ego speaks up after a few tense moments as they wait to see if Togami will return. He doesn’t. Alter Ego guides them through the construction of the rigs they will need to enter the simulation.

They make three over the course of the next few weeks although Togami is still avoiding them, simply stationing himself by the screens on the other side of the room and watching as class 77-B’s tropical school trip becomes the worst sort of hell.

Naegi watches too, when he’s not making their jury-rigged set up. Hinata continues to enrapture him.

He’s fighting so hard. To think that he was a Reserve Course student… It makes him wonder what the hell qualifies as a talent, what separates them out from one another, when Hinata is one of the front-runners to solve every case, when he’s befriending the students even as their lives fall apart, even as he doesn’t even _know_ who he is.

He smiles when Hinata makes a snide comment, and laughs at his antics with the wilder students among the group. His heart aches when he finds the bodies of his friends, and pounds when Hinata is in the trial room.

Hinata makes him want to work even harder. If he fails or doesn’t make it in time and Hinata dies, then… There’s a large chance they’ll never be able to retrieve his memories again. That part of him that had managed to hang on inside of Kamukura will be snuffed out forever.

He tears his eyes away from the screen and turns back to his work. Kirigiri gives him a small, knowing smile, glancing at the sun-tanned face he’s been staring at for who knows how long now.

He won’t let that happen. He won’t let Hinata slip away into nothingness again.


	2. Oil and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hinata and Kamukura awaken.

It’s over. All of it… _Finally._

The shutdown sequence activates and the light consumes them. Those guys from the Future Foundation had gone ahead of them, and he’d finally had his chance to say thank you to Nanami, from the bottom of his heart. No matter what, when they wake up, even if he has to claw his way back from hell, he’s going to get his body back.

He can feel himself being pulled, his brain being _tugged_ forwards by something, and a warm force pushing at his back, comforting him through the strange, almost painful experience.

Nanami's helping him one last time, is she?

He shuts his eyes and relaxes into the force, trusting her.

When they open again, his head feels… heavy. Cramped. He blinks and feels his lashes catch on the long hair in front of his face.

A plexiglass cover above him hisses as it slides up and over his face, opening above him. He remembers coming here. Naegi brought them here. All of them - except for Nanami, of course. That had been a surprise. Seeing her again…

Hinata struggles to move but his body stays motionless.

Why does he remember coming to this place? Why does he remember Nanami from before? His brain feels awash in static noise, blurring and crackling. Sitting with her, playing games with her, is that real? His brain is burning. It hurts. The memories twist and fade back into darkness until he’s not sure what’s real and what isn’t. Did Nanami really exist… or not?

His heart pounds, pulse jumping wildly in his throat, even as his body stays utterly still.

_So… in the end, the answer is both of us._

Hinata feels his heart clench tightly in fear at the voice inside of his head that sounds so much like himself, but smoother. Colder.

_How interesting._

A familiar face pops up above him, hovering over him with a hesitant smile, like the sun hovering on the horizon, just waiting to breach and bring the bright dawn. Naegi Makoto. Their saviour. He looks a little older than he did in the simulation, a little more mature, but just as hopeful. Hinata tries again to move, wanting to reach out and touch him to make sure it's _real._

"I apologize," his mouth says, but it's not him saying it. It's _Kamukura._ The voice is so familiar and alien all at the same time.

Naegi's expression morphs into surprise for a second before it changes into a burning determination. It looks like it did when he was laying down to enter the simulation in the first place - or does it? Why does he remember those things? That wasn't him!

"I'm glad you remembered," Naegi says. "But… Is it just you?"

"No. He is here. I wished to speak to you first."

The dawn breaks. Naegi smiles with such warmth that it almost makes Hinata want to look away.

"So you're both here… That's fantastic." Naegi clasps a hand over his heart and closes his eyes in relief. "I was worried we would lose you."

"Which?" Kamukura asks. "Which were you afraid of losing?"

Hinata is almost scared to hear the answer. He's never been the first choice. Not ever. He's always been in the middle of the pack, fighting and clawing to win, to get even an inch ahead so that he could finally say to himself, 'I'm not a failure'. After everything, he finally feels as though he can put that inferiority away… But… If the person who went through Hell for them, who betrayed the world for them, says that he'd prefer saving Kamukura - well, Hinata just isn't sure how he'll recover from that.

He sees a flash of a cracked, brittle memory, of a room awash in the setting sun, overlaid with the memory of a bleeding red hologram in a fake school - and reels under the intensity of the nameless, writhing emotions attached to them.

Naegi opens his eyes and the warmth in them cuts down to Hinata's core. "Both of you. I told you I'd save all of you, didn't I?"

Hinata feels his lips turn up and he's not sure who smiled - him or Kamukura.

He thinks it might be both of them.

"Do you mind if I talk to Hinata?"

Kamukura shakes their head, and Hinata _feels_ again. Until that moment, he hadn't realized just how distant he was from his body. Like he'd been feeling and seeing the world through a blurred filter, the sound dimmed and the brightness dulled. As though he’d been submerged in water, drowning without realizing it, and now he’s breached the surface. All of the sensation almost hurts.

He shudders and blinks rapidly, adjusting to being _alive_ again.

"Hinata?"

A warm hand - too warm - brushes the hair out of his face.

His eyes refocus and he properly sees their saviour for the first time. The blurred filter is gone. He can _see_ him. The hazel eyes that look like his - or are his red? He can’t remember. Hair that’s similar to his, if a little longer - but that’s wrong. His hair is long now, has been since the surgery. The acidic taste of bile rises to the back of his throat that he swallows down.

He forces himself to focus on Naegi instead of the sensation of being torn between two lives. His suit is wrinkled and slightly dirty, like he'd been doing manual labour in it for days. He smells like Souda, a little. Like metalworking. He remembers only seeing enough pods for the fifteen of them - did he… actually make something just to get inside and save them?

 _Yes,_ Kamukura answers internally.

"Oh fuck," Hinata curses at the unexpected voice in his head. The weight in his head makes itself known again, crushing him with the knowledge that he’s not alone inside. Even though Kamukura seems content for now to leave Hinata in control, he’s still there.

The warm hand is back, curling around his shoulder. Naegi's brows pull together in worry, lips turning his bright smile into a frown.

"Are you alright?"

Hinata feels stupider than ever before as he struggles to answer, a little more stunned by the feeling of someone touching him - _he has a fucking body again -_ than he maybe should be. Even Kamukura’s presence seems to quieten.

"Y-Yeah, I’m fine," he manages lamely after swallowing thickly.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Huh? Of course -” Hinata stops short. Wasn’t he supposed to forget everything in the simulation? They’d promised not to forget, but a promise like that was supposed to be impossible. They’d really managed to remember?

Naegi huffs a small breath, entire body exuding relief. “I’m so glad. Do you need help sitting up?"

He opens his mouth to say no and it clicks shut forcefully without his input. Then his head nods, and he wrestles for control again as the world dims.

Naegi pauses for a moment as he looks his arm behind their neck. "Kamukura?"

He blinks and the world swims as it comes back into focus.

Naegi tilts his head and laughs quietly. "I see… I guess you're both still working things out. For now, let's get you out of this thing, okay? Don’t stress yourselves out too much. The others are getting up too. Togami and Kirigiri are helping them. You don't want to keep them waiting, do you?"

Hinata almost thanks Kamukura for his interference when Naegi curls his arm behind him, the other hand gently resting over his chest. The sensation of touch is still something overwhelming, breath feeling caught in his chest as his pulse thunders. Whatever he’d felt in the simulation pales in comparison to being in his real body. It’s like a greyscale world suddenly being splashed with colour.

Naegi leans in so close that he can nearly count every lash - 

_Three hundred and eighty three._

Hinata twitches and inwardly curses his other self. Then when Naegi holds him a little closer as he guides him upwards, his hair whispering against theirs, Hinata begrudgingly forgives him.

* * *

Naegi feels like he can’t stop himself from smiling all the time now, on the island with the five survivors of the Neo World Program. Somehow, someway, they had managed to retain their memories of the simulation and had effectively overcome their despair by latching onto the hope and friendships they’d regained inside.

Alter Ego had no real explanation for it, so Naegi decided to attribute it to their character - not the bloody, despairful terrorists they’d become thanks to Enoshima, but their _true_ selves. He feels deeply, genuinely proud of them all for coming so far.

In the mornings after the awakening, he heads to the restaurant located in the hotel - not named Mirai in the real world, in actuality. It’s name is Hotel Wabe. That had been a change Alter Ego had made to subtly encourage the students to think about the future even in small ways. Naegi’s not totally sure that’s how that works, but Alter Ego had been quite confident about the alteration.

They’d all agreed to meet up at the restaurant first thing every morning in a pale mimicry of their actions in the killing games, but this time none of them have to feel anxious nausea wondering if they’ll find someone missing.

Now that the storm of Enoshima has passed, the island feels calm and welcoming. They’d chosen this place for a reason, after all. To heal. To recover. To have a safe space away from the world to come to terms with everything.

Maybe he’s been needing that too.

Ever since the end of the killing game, he feels as though he’s been going non-stop, throwing himself against the grindstone over and over with a fervour to put even the slightest dent in the despair coating the world and doing nothing but wearing himself paper thin. His classmates have been working just as hard as him, even Hagakure, but… something feels a little different when it comes to him.

After all, he’s the one who’s been saddled with a title like ‘Ultimate Hope’, right? That name has brought him nothing but trouble it seems sometimes, and he almost feels bitter during particularly rough nights full of nightmares and guilt, but he doesn’t hold that weakness of his against Kirigiri.

So what if Munakata makes snide comments about his hope not being strong enough? Or Ando wondering aloud if he was _truly_ Hope, then why couldn’t he save more of his classmates? Or all of the people who cry in front of him and nearly pray to him in _Hope_ that he’ll fix everything with a few words.

He’s only human.

He stops on the path and forces himself to take a few deep breaths, calming himself, feeling his mouth dry and chest tighten.

It’s hard. It’s really hard. He can’t stop moving because if he did, what kind of friend would he be? Throwing away the sacrifices that his classmates had all made is simply inexcusable. Jabberwock Island is a chance to take a breath before he has to return to the real world and resume his breakneck sprint towards a hopeful future.

Here, he’s not the Ultimate Hope anymore. He’s Togami and Kirigiri’s less competent classmate. He’s the Remnants’ friend, all of them seemingly agreeing silently to ignore his title and status and treat him like an underclassman. He’s just Naegi Makoto.

Guiltily, he wishes he could be _just_ Naegi Makoto again for the rest of his life. But he can’t.

It takes a few more long moments of controlled breathing for the dark mood lingering over him to vanish, melting off of him into the blue, sunny skies, drifting away like it had been nothing more than a fleeting daymare.

He looks up at the bright blue skies dotted with soft white clouds. He’s alive and he’s here right now.

A cabin door opens a little ways down the path and a man with long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail steps out. Naegi feels himself start smiling again.

“Hinata! Kamukura!”

He freezes in the middle of closing the door, posture shifting from casual into something stiff and composed. The person who looks over at him has red, hard eyes. Kamukura still incites that feeling of being a deer caught in headlights, like he’s looking at something he shouldn’t, too inhuman and perfect to be observed directly.

Kamukura shuts the door and waits until Naegi reaches him, watching him unblinkingly.

“Good morning,” Naegi greets politely.

Kamukura dips his head. “You’re disappointed.”

Naegi’s lips twitch as he stops himself from grimacing under Kamukura’s sharp eyes. It’s a little true, he supposes. He enjoys Kamukura’s dry, intelligent company - his insight and vast knowledge of the world enchant him. He never lacks for an interesting conversation with his fellow Hope. And although he’s keenly aware of the fact he’s much less intelligent than Kamukura, well… That’s not too different from how he feels with Togami and Kirigiri.

At the same time, no matter how much he enjoys spending time with Kamukura, he’d also rather like to spend some time with Hinata.

“I’m… just curious how Hinata’s doing,” he excuses himself lamely.

“He’s recovering well,” Kamukura says, turning with clear intent towards the restaurant.

“I know,” he says, before quickly correcting himself at Kamukura’s slow blink, “I mean, Kirigiri’s told me! Since you don’t really come out when she’s there. Or… I guess Togami either.”

Kamukura begins walking slowly, Naegi falling into step next to him. His steps are slow and measured, so he doesn’t find himself having to rush to keep up unlike when he’s walking with Togami.

“I have no desire to speak with them.”

Naegi purses his lips at that, looking up at the taller man curiously. “I’d have thought they’d be more interesting to talk to. Kirigiri knows so much from being a detective, and Togami has a lot of different skills and things…”

“I have no interest,” Kamukura says flatly.

That doesn’t really make a lot of sense to him, but he lets it go. Kamukura has so much going on in his head, maybe he prefers spending time with someone who just… _doesn’t._ Not that he thinks of himself as being stupid! But… compared to the rest, he’s not the smartest person in the room either.

Kamukura stops. He stops too after another step, looking back and feeling startled at the frown on the other man’s face. It’s nothing more than a slight downturn of the corners of his mouth, but it’s certainly a frown.

“Is something wrong?”

“It does not befit you to act as though you are lesser than them.”

Naegi scratches his cheek, embarrassed at how easily his inner thoughts are parsed by the other man. “Er. Uh, well, I mean it’s true right? I might be a little more determined than most people, but compared to you and them, I’m pretty normal. The only reason people think I’m special is because I just got lucky.”

Kamukura arches a brow. “‘Luck’ helped you solve murders?”

“Ah - well without Kirigiri I never would’ve made it through. I leaned on her that whole time.”

“And without you, they would have perished.”

It’s his turn to frown. He knows what his friends and other observers have said - that he helped keep them together, rallied them to overcome Enoshima, but he wasn’t the only one fighting there. Just one person _isn’t_ that special, no matter their title or talent. If he had died, if he had been crushed by Enoshima’s execution, then he _knows_ Kirigiri would have still fought on. He willingly refused to show that piece of evidence that would incriminate her because he believed in her - in all of them - so much.

The power of Hope isn’t one person - it’s many people, many beliefs all coming together to form one strong determination that can overcome anything. He’s just a _person._ For Kamukura to insinuate otherwise makes him feel oddly lonely.

Shouldn’t his fellow Hope understand that? Isn’t their burden heavy enough without having to feel as though they need to suffer it alone?

“I’m just human,” he says quietly. “I’m _not_ ‘Hope’.”

Kamukura’s eyes narrow. “You are who you are and there is no escaping that fact. For simply being ‘just human’, you have incredible power and no awareness of it. I find that part of you interesting.”

“Thanks, I guess,” he mutters, a little confused. Power? If he had power, he could have stopped despair already.

Kamukura looks to the side, appearing to consider something. Then the sharpness in Kamukura’s gaze dulls, white crosshairs dimming and morphing into a simple diagonal line, and red turning to muddy brown before fading into a pale green.

Naegi grins. “Hinata!”

Hinata’s expression morphs from mild surprise to a happy smile. “Naegi! I’m shocked - this asshole’s finally letting me get a chance to talk to you.”

So they’re still not getting along… Well, maybe this is the first step towards them working together better. Sharing a body can’t be easy. If he gets the chance, perhaps he can get Togami to ask Fukawa for her advice on it, although her and Jill’s situation seems vastly different from theirs.

“It’s good to see you!”

The last time had been as he guided Hinata out of his pod. Otherwise, he’d had to satiate himself on watching Hinata from afar and indulge himself in reading Kirigiri’s neatly printed notes on his behaviour.

“You too! Ah, by the way, about the conversation you were just having…” Hinata trails off, pulling a hand through his ponytail roughly. “I think you do underestimate yourself a lot. You saved our lives. _You_ did.”

“Not at all,” he denies firmly. “You all saved yourselves, just like I told Kamukura you would. All I did was have faith in you.”

“Uh huh,” Hinata says, sounding utterly unconvinced. “And steal us out from under the Future Foundation’s nose - you stole the Neo World Program from them too, brought us to an island that’s off most maps, _and_ built gear to get inside of the simulation when everything was going to shit… No, yeah, I guess you had _nothing_ to do with it.”

His cheeks warm. “That’s… Okay, we got you here, but -”

“Just give up and let me be thankful already,” Hinata says, cutting him off with an irritated look. “I don’t know how long he’ll let me be in control, so just say ‘you’re welcome’, will you?”

Naegi can’t help but laugh at the pseudo-scolding. “Alright, I get it. You’re welcome. I hope you said thank you to Togami and Kirigiri too.”

“Of course I did. We all did. Well, I mean this guy didn’t, but I don’t even know if he counts…” Hinata sighs, shaking his head at Kamukura’s behaviour. “Anyways, before he changes his mind, let’s go get some breakfast.”

“Okay!”

They fall into an easy pace. Hinata walks a little faster, but Naegi has plenty of practice at keeping up with taller people. He finds this small difference in pace between the two of them amusing, even a little charming. Hinata was simply too busy chattering about his classmates and drawing Naegi into an energetic conversation to think about it.

His inflection and tone are so much different than Kamukura’s, and there’s something unique about hearing it up close, not crackled and blurred through a computer screen. It’s full of life and brightness, whereas Kamukura’s is steady and assured.

He knows it’s not really right to compare them, but it’s too intriguing seeing how they differ. Their personalities are night and day, faceted gems that shine in their own ways.

He can’t wait to see more and more of the both of them.

* * *

“Stop grinning like a fool. You make me want to pretend as though I don’t even know you,” Togami says with disgust in his voice, even as he carries over a cup of coffee that he’d made for him.

“I can’t help it if I’m happy.” He accepts the cup with a small thank you and turns back to watching Hinata interact with his friends.

Three of the survivors - Owari, Sonia, and Souda - had pulled Hinata away eagerly when they’d arrived. Kuzuryu always arrives last, spending his morning talking to the comatose Pekoyama through her pod, spurred by Alter Ego’s proposal that perhaps they could hear them through their comas and awaken faster.

Hinata keeps turning to look at him with a smile tugging at his mouth before being dragged back into conversation with the Ultimates who all seem eager to wring every last detail of Hinata’s life out of him, finally unravelling the mystery behind him.

Naegi listens carefully to them although he’s read it all in Kirigiri’s reports by now. It’s still fresh and new to hear it from Hinata’s mouth.

Togami scoffs. “Your taste is pitiful.”

“Taste?” He pulls his attention back from the rowdy group and looks at the coffee, wondering if Togami had done something to it that he didn’t taste. It’s not something he’d expect from the heir, but he’s been surprised by Togami before.

Togami stares at him as one would a particularly shocking, disgusting bug. “Naegi. I wasn’t referring to the damn drink.”

“Um…” Naegi puts the coffee down just in case. “Sorry, what did you mean?”

“The Reserve student,” Togami says curtly.

Naegi looks over at him and meets Hinata’s eyes. He’d been looking over at him again. Hinata gives him a small wave and turns back to the others. Sonia doesn’t immediately return to their conversation, casting a thoughtful look over at him too, then at Hinata. Then she smiles and turns away.

“Naegi.”

“Oh, sorry!” Naegi feels his face burn a little as he pays attention to Togami again. “What about him?”

Togami’s eyes shut in clear frustration. As Kirigiri approaches the table, he says, “Would you, the only other person on this island who apparently has any brain cells, please get this buffoon to recognize the way he is mooning after one of those terrorists? And then hopefully get him to _stop_ before I puke.”

“Mooning?” Naegi repeats incredulously.

Kirigiri takes a seat at the table with a quirked brow. “I’m surprised you even brought it up, Togami. Finally getting soft?”

“As if.”

She tilts her head with an upturned mouth, which is as close to an outright laugh as she gets. “Well, Naegi. Have you figured it out?”

“It has something to do with Hinata…” he says hesitantly. “That’s about it.”

Kirigiri nods. “That’s right. Your behaviour around him is very particular in comparison to your behaviour around the other Remnants, or around us.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Togami hisses. “You’re acting like a lovestruck idiot just like you did with that idol.”

With Maizono? He shakes his head, already laughing at how ridiculous that is, because he’s pretty sure he would’ve _noticed_ -

Kirigiri says, “Think about it with an open mind.”

So Naegi considers it.

He remembers how deeply his feelings had once gone for Maizono, how just looking at her took his breath away. That’s… not entirely unlike how he felt looking at Kamukura back at the school, nor how he feels when he sees Hinata laughing under the sun. In different, equal ways, they both appear breathtakingly beautiful.

But he thinks Kirigiri is beautiful too, scars and all, and he thinks Asahina is beautiful in a bubbly, energetic way, and even Togami has a sharp, regal look to him that Naegi can’t help but admire when he himself looks so soft and young. They don’t steal his breath away, though.

He frowns and thinks further.

He remembers how much he wanted to protect Maizono’s smile, knowing how little power he truly had and still promising he’d save her - and doesn’t that hurt, knowing that she’d twisted that desire of his to protect her into a weapon? He knows that’s not fair to her, not when they’d had all of their school memories erased, but it hurts deeply all the same.

Still, he must admit that it’s not entirely unlike his desire to save Kamukura and Hinata either, and this time he’d _succeeded._ Of course he wanted to save the other Remnants too, but they were special, weren’t they?

They’re _special._

He clasps his hands in front of him on the table and feels the world tilt under him.

“I see,” he says.

Togami makes a deeply unimpressed sound and Kirigiri smirks at him.

He’s not entirely sure what to do with this new information. Kamukura doesn’t seem the type to entertain things are common and ‘boring’ as relationships, and Hinata is still gaining his footing. It simply wouldn’t be fair to put a burden like Naegi’s feelings onto him when he’s so vulnerable.

That’s alright. As long as they can both find happiness in their own way, he’ll support them. The world stabilizes and he picks back up his coffee.

“Underwhelming as usual,” Togami says without any real bite.

“So that’s your decision, is it?” Kirigiri asks. “To do nothing?”

He shrugs. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea right now.”

Kirigiri watches him quietly for a moment, exchanging a look with Togami. “If you do, we support you. Even if this causes even more issues with the Foundation, we support you. You deserve happiness here. We both think so.”

Togami says nothing, avoiding his gaze and sipping at his coffee.

If they weren’t on the other side of the table, he’d have grabbed both of them into a hug.

He looks back at Hinata. Kuzuryu’s there now, Souda has an arm slung over his and Hinata’s shoulders, teasing them about something. Hinata’s scowling at them but not trying to escape Souda’s arm.

He’s happy just to be his friend, Naegi thinks. Maybe someday he can think about it. Until then, he’ll keep building a path for them back into the world, and hope that it’s enough.

* * *

It’s hard getting used to living with another person inside of your head. It’s been a few weeks and Kamukura still feels omnipresent. Even when he’s not saying anything or moving their body, Hinata always knows he’s there. Like a shadow looming over him, watching him.

His classmates and the Future Foundation three always know when Kamukura is taking control - his eyes go from green to red and the diagonal lines in his eyes morph into crosshairs. It’s always just on this side of uncomfortable when he’s forced back into the depths of their shared mind, feeling his head being pushed back under the murky waters to wait.

No matter how much he struggles against Kamukura’s control, he can barely make his fingers twitch. It’s _frustrating,_ knowing that it is only by Kamukura’s allowance he’s given any control of their body at all.

At the same time, the only times when Kamukura forcefully takes over is when he wants to speak to Naegi - beyond that, he’s generally too bored to do anything and lets Hinata roam freely. He supposes he should just be grateful that Kamukura gives him a few minutes now and then to speak to Naegi as well.

Like now.

“It’s going to be hard when they wake up,” he confesses, thinking about his slumbering friends.

Alter Ego had confirmed that none of them had suffered brain death thankfully, but all of them were in deep comas that would be difficult to wake them from. Still… That means all of them will have ‘died’, even if it was just in a simulation. Add that to the despair still lingering around them and it’ll be a rough road to recovery.

Admitting he’s scared of seeing them again is hard, but he trusts Naegi with these secret worries.

“I believe that they’ll handle what happened alright,” Naegi says as they walk together on one of the beaches. He’s pulled his dress shoes and socks off, pant legs rolled up a little as they wander over the white sands. “I’m sure it’ll be okay in the end. You’re all amazing people.”

“You’ve got a lot of faith.”

That faith is something Hinata likes about him though. He feels put at ease when he hears the conviction in Naegi’s words, like just for a moment he can put the weight he’s carrying down, like he’s getting a drink of water after wandering through a desert. It’s soothing. It’s part of why he likes being around the smaller man so much.

“My one good point is my optimism,” Naegi says lightly.

Hinata rolls his eyes. For someone who’s been given the title of Ultimate Hope - something that Hinata wasn’t sure how to take, at first, feeling his old scars of inferiority panging - he’s awfully humble.

Their conversation peters out into a comfortable silence, their wandering walk echoed by the ocean’s whispers. Just being next to the smaller man fills him with a slow, steady hope that things will be alright. They’re just two normal people here instead of the Ultimate Hope and a resurrected member of the Reserve Course.

He’s been happy to spend time with his other friends who’d survived, and had even come to appreciate Kirigiri’s dry wit and the real Togami’s cutting remarks, but these walks were special. Something about Naegi just feels… special.

Kamukura’s presence _moves_ in his head, and Hinata knows he agrees.

It reminds him a little of how Nanami made him feel. Not the same, exactly, because Naegi and Nanami aren’t the same people, but Naegi supports him like she did. Unflinchingly, even knowing what Kamukura has done. His lack of talent isn’t something shameful or something to mock in their eyes.

He knows how he felt about her - both in real life and in the simulation. He’d truly have been happy with her, he thinks.

His memories have slowly begun reintegrating into Kamukura’s. Not enough to make them completely fuse, but enough that Hinata doesn’t feel off-kilter every time he ‘remembers’ something. The memories of Nanami that slowly come into focus make him feel both joyful to have more to remember her by, and crushed knowing that he’d thrown away their friendship for a chance at talent.

* * *

‘How could you not save her?’ _he asks when he remembers her face, her last words, before she was brutally murdered. He’s bent over on his bed, weeping, clawing at his face, his hair, hating himself and Kamukura more than he’d imagined possible. His hatred for Enoshima is miniscule in comparison._

_Kamukura does not answer for a long time, until Hinata has cried until he feels like he’ll vomit, until his nails have gone red with blood from torn skin._

‘I wanted to feel.’

_And that’s it. No excuses or reasons other than that._

* * *

Hinata had felt disgusted knowing such a person could come from him. Boredom is no excuse, not for anything he’s done. Crying at her death does not earn any forgiveness. Keeping her hair pin does not earn any forgiveness. Tending a flower on her desk does not earn any forgiveness.

He doesn’t know exactly how to resolve the stormy emotions inside of him when he thinks about her, about her death. She wouldn’t have wanted him to steep himself in despair over it, he knows, so he tries not to let himself focus on it for too long. She died twice, and Hinata has now lived twice. He puts a hand in his pocket to feel the hairpin and he breathes in the salty ocean air.

He’s alive again. That’s what matters. Everything he does now, he’ll have her memory with him.

And… he looks over at Naegi. He has people who will support him through it.

Maybe one day he can ask Naegi if there is a future out there that they can walk together. It isn’t a betrayal of Nanami’s memory. She wouldn’t have wanted him to cut himself off from other people, he knows that. For him to love someone else doesn’t mean he has to forget her memory.

He thumbs over the Galaga hairpin and smiles.

It’s nearly evening now, the setting sun casting an orange fire over the seas, a light breeze cutting through the stifling heat of the day. Hinata irritably pushes some hair out of his face. He hasn’t had the chance to cut it yet.

Naegi stops and looks at him, haloed by the sun. There’s a peculiar look on his face, and a smile tugging at his mouth.

Hinata feels a little warm under his attention. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just… You kinda look like you did when I first met you. Do you remember?”

Kamukura takes over without warning. “I do.”

Naegi hums a little, used to the abrupt changes by now. “Does Hinata?”

Without even pretending to entertain that question, Kamukura plainly accuses him, “You want to know how much of us has bonded.”

He laughs a little, scratching his cheek. “I guess so. Sorry, I didn’t mean to try and be underhanded about it, if that offended you guys at all.”

Kamukura stares at him critically. “We will more than likely never coalesce into one person. He has begun to remember life before, and my memories have become easier for him to access. That is as far as it will go. I told you once, I do not have any intention of returning to being that person.”

“Yeah…” Naegi’s voice sounds a little wistful, the curve of his mouth becoming a little sad. “I’m sorry that you two aren’t getting along very well.”

Kamukura opens his mouth and pauses for a split second, before carefully saying, “His… absorbance of our memories is not the only thing that has changed between us. I also… have gained something.”

Hinata struggles to surface, clawing into Kamukura, digging into the brief moment of hesitation. To his surprise, something gives, and he finds himself breaking out from the water into something icy cold and brittle.

Naegi’s mouth forms an ‘o’ of surprise when they step towards him.

His brain feels hot and cold, like it’s being knocked back and forth like a shuttle ball, both of them cramming themselves together in the forefront of their mind, sharing the space. It’s noisy, the hissing static shaking him, but the world is so, _so_ clear to him when they look down at Naegi with shared vision.

He remembers what he must have looked like to Naegi back then in the classroom. Kamukura’s memory is perfectly detailed, crisp and clear in an unnatural way. The sun had been burning and red at his back, like it is now at Naegi’s back. But his eyes were surely not this warm.

“Which one are you right now?” Naegi asks, voice easily slipping through the white noise.

_Both._

“Both.”

Which one of them spoke just now?

Naegi quirks a brow. “That explains your eyes. But didn’t you just say that this wouldn’t happen?”

He doesn’t know. The other presence inside of his head shivers, and he can’t stop the memories - Kamukura meeting Naegi, riding in a vehicle with him, speaking to him just before the simulation, seeing his face first back inside of his body, seeing him on a television screen victorious over Despair, meeting him _inside_ of the simulation, hearing him sound so hurt and so determined when he’d declared _“I wanted to save you!” -_

Hinata feels like he’s melting, swirling into a mess with an ice cold void, but the void doesn’t seem so empty or so cold as it once did.

Kamukura’s presence shudders next to him and suddenly the memory of Nanami being speared flashes loudly inside of their mind’s eye. Hinata reels back, and is shoved back under the water.

Naegi slowly reaches out to touch their arm. “Kamukura? Are you both okay?”

Their body is shaking. Hinata can feel them shaking so hard it feels like they’ll fall apart.

Kamukura takes a steadying breath and the shivers subside. “That was unexpected.”

Naegi’s hand slowly rubs their arm soothingly, brow pinched. “Is there anything you need me to do? Do you need to sit down?”

“The side effect I mentioned, the thing I have ‘gained’...” Kamukura pauses again, and Hinata senses the opportunity to drag himself back out, but his mind is still spiralling in a nausea-inducing way and the opportunity passes by. “I believe I have gained some of his emotions.”

“Ah… So, you didn’t feel emotions before?” Naegi sounds unconvinced. No wonder, for a man so driven by emotion himself.

“If they were not non-existent, then they were extremely minor inconveniences at best.”

“Oh. Well then, how does it feel to, ah, _feel?_ ”

“It is... interesting.” Hinata feels an echo from Kamukura that seems oddly familiar to something _he_ feels too. Something warm and tender. It sends him even more off balance recognizing it inside of the cold, machine-like Kamukura. “Although perhaps it is untrue to say that this is purely because of Hinata. I felt something similar before the simulation.”

Naegi still hasn’t pulled his hand away. “What’d you feel?”

Kamukura leans down, unblinkingly watching Naegi’s face go red at their proximity. “I felt as though I wanted something from you. I’m beginning to realize what that is.”

“U-Uh, wh-what was it?” Naegi stammers, eyes flickering down to their lips.

Hinata knows exactly what’s happening before it does.

Kamukura finishes leaning in and presses their mouths together softly.

Hinata feels the sensations second-hand, through a thick film of fuzzy haze: Naegi’s lips, warm and soft, and the way his hand clenches on their forearm before relaxing and slipping around their back to pull them closer. Kamukura wraps their arms around him in return, easily folding him into a gentle embrace.

It feels voyeuristic even though he’s seeing it through their eyes, because he’s not the one kissing Naegi, and he’s not the one Naegi is kissing.

He feels a churning wave of anger surge through him and he kicks at Kamukura’s control.

To his surprise it gives way and he’s shunted into control, the sensation of their mouths moving together suddenly brutally clear, and the warmth of their bodies pressed against one another is overwhelming. He shudders violently with the desire to step away - because he’s not the one who is _wanted_ \- combined with the desire to wrap himself up inside of the embrace and never leave it. Naegi breaks away, panting softly against his mouth, sending a cascade of shivers down his spine.

“Hinata?”

“Sorry,” he says bitterly, hands flexing on Naegi’s back with his conflicting emotions, “I’m not the right one, huh.”

“Uh… That’s…” Naegi doesn’t pull away either, giving him an awkward smile-grimace. “I wouldn’t say you’re the wrong one!”

_As I thought. Both of us._

Hinata’s jaw drops. “B-Both?”

The smile-grimace becomes strained. “I’m sorry...?”

The slithering cold tendrils of Kamukura’s presence press against the inside of his skull, wrapping around him like icy ink, nudging him aside until they’re sharing the same space again and his brain feels like it’s being frozen and burned all at the same time. It’s so _noisy._ His thoughts are buzzing and spiralling in patterns he can barely recognize, everything is happening all at once --

Is this because of Kamukura? Is this what it’s like in his head all the time? Too much - the sound is killing him.

Naegi slides his hands from behind their back, up their chest, and curls them around their jaw, urging him forwards. Hinata can see him _so_ clearly. Every inch, every spare freckle or speck of colour in his eye is immaculately catalogued. “Are you two alright?”

He wants to kiss him. Kamukura agrees. They move together this time, and the white noise dims, turning from a frightening storm of thoughts and knowledge into something quieter, like rolling thunder in the distance.

Naegi thumbs over their cheeks as they press together, skin rough with the calluses that had finally formed from the blisters he’d gained when making their jury-rigged machines to enter the simulation. Hinata likes that. A little reminder of how much they’d meant to him even then, that he’d go so far to save them.

When his hands go further up, into their hair, and skate across the surgery scars, Hinata finds himself blasted with memories again - the papers he’d signed, the Steering Committee, the _surgery -_

His grip on reality is slipping.

As though he can sense Hinata fraying, Naegi’s blunt nails draw across their scalp, pulling slightly at their hair and firmly distracting him from the scars. Hinata and Kamukura press their hands into the small of his back and try futilely to draw him closer.

Kamukura guides their kiss more than he does, easily tilting their head into a better angle and licking into Naegi’s willing mouth, so Hinata focuses on pouring every ounce of himself into their embrace - hands stroking over his back to feel the lithe muscles moving under the thin dress shirt, moving up to tangle in the short hair at the back of his neck.

He wants to feel more and more and more until the sensations are imprinted into him. Messy passion mixing with calculated desire until Naegi is sighing happily into the hot space between their mouths.

It feels like too much, a frisson of energy crackling over them when Naegi’s hands drop to their waist and slip under their button-up, fingers skimming their skin with a touch that feels unbearably hot. Kamukura feels it and Hinata feels it and they pass the sensation back and forth between themselves, a feedback loop building in their head until Hinata feels dizzy and drunk.

The ocean waves whisper around their ankles as the tide pulls in, the sun dipping down until they’re enveloped in a violet glow. The water washes away the sand under their feet, laps at their skin, a satisfying cool touch to cut through the burning, melting heat overwhelming him.

Then he hears a crunch of a footstep on the sand - Hinata himself would never have heard it, not as enveloped in Naegi’s warmth as they are, but Kamukura hears it.

They pull away with a wet sound of their lips parting. Naegi tries following them with flushed cheeks and hazy eyes, lifting himself up until Kamukura turns their head away to look over their shoulder to see who’s interrupted them.

Kirigiri stands a few meters away, arms crossed and a faintly amused smile tugging at her mouth. “Hello. I need Naegi to come with me.”

Naegi makes a strangled sound and extricates himself from their embrace. His absence leaves them cold. “K-Kirigiri, um -”

She turns on her heel. “Naegi… I didn’t see anything if that’s how you want it to be. But I and Togami must speak to you privately. Hurry along.”

“O-Okay!” Naegi watches her go and turns to them with an apologetic look.

They want to wrap him up in their arms and take him to bed and undo him even more, share even more of him - the feedback loop echos that thought back and forth until it’s drowning out the static noise -

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,” Naegi says, voice barely filtering through their swirling thoughts. “I’d like to do this again sometime!” Then he smacks his face and goes red. “Please pretend I didn’t just say that.”

He leaves them standing in the ocean water, the setting sun painting them in purples and violets. Like oil and water they slowly separate out until they’re themselves again and not some hot-cold mixture of thoughts and feelings and urges and needs.

The haze over his mind lifts and the noise recedes with Kamukura, until his body is his own again and the intensity of his thoughts and feelings have lessened into something manageable.

Kamukura is quiet as Hinata slowly regathers himself, straightening out his shirt and raking a few anxious fingers through his hair. His mouth feels tender and wet and his skin is still tingling with the phantom sensations of Naegi touching him. Somehow he manages not to throw himself into the ocean with the intent of drowning himself in shame at the thought of stoic Kirigiri seeing them making out like horny teenagers.

Kamukura speaks then, _We will need to resolve our issues if this is to continue. And I have no intentions of having that be the end of things._

“I guess we’re agreed, for once,” Hinata huffs.

He’d wanted the chance at a future with Naegi, but to think he’d have to share with _him_ of all things irritates him. Still, he’s willing to make it work. There’s no getting away from his other self at this point. Fighting against it is only going to make things worse for himself.

_I apologize for letting Nanami Chiaki die._

Hinata startles at that. He’d... really not expected to ever hear something like that from him.

_I harboured a fragment of hatred towards Enoshima Junko somewhere inside of myself afterwards, but I was still invested in my own satisfaction and desire to defeat my own boredom. I cannot change my actions now._

“No, you can’t… But you can change yourself going forward. I don’t want to be stuck in a body with a guy as loved by talent as you and have him do _nothing_ to help people. It’s my fault you were made, too.”

Kamukura is silent.

“And Naegi is going to want you to help too,” he adds impatiently. “He’s been telling all of us that some day, when things settle down, he’ll help us all go back to the outside world and fix our mistakes. You’re not exempt.”

He still doesn’t receive an answer. He rubs a hand over his forehead irritably.

“I guess that’s going to be a work in progress.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this half written when I posted the first chapter so the last one will probably take longer. I'm pretty happy with how this came out though. Please leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	3. Duality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The future waiting for them unfolds in unexpected directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh this gets,,, suggestive at points. I may end up changing my mind and bumping the rating to M but I'll leave it as is for now. I kept trying to end it and then wrote more and more until I got this behemoth. enjoy!

The sand crunches quietly under his feet as he walks away from the ocean and towards where Kirigiri has gone.

His knees feel a little soft, and his heart is still fluttering like a bird inside of his chest, wings trying eagerly to expand but not having quite enough space, until his chest feels full and alive and not nearly as aching and empty as it has been for years.

The killing game and the Tragedy had carved something out of him, scraped out his guts until he felt like he was running on nothing but fumes, but… The giddiness and that fluttering bird-heart of his feel as though they’re trying to fill in those missing pieces. His cheeks hurt from how wide his grin is and he doesn’t stop smiling even as he catches up to the awaiting Kirigiri.

She gives him a once over before reaching out gloved hands to adjust his collar. “You nearly look as though you’ve been mauled,” she says with the corner of her mouth quirked upwards.

His mood doesn’t dim in the slightest at her teasing, and he sweeps a hand through his hair and across his mouth to try and make himself look slightly more proper, although what he’d really prefer doing is going back down to the beach and entwining himself with Kamukura and Hinata again. He supposes he should scold himself for so quickly giving up on his desire to let them both get their feet back onto solid ground before starting anything with them, but it’s hard to regret it.

Kirigiri’s mouth flattens out as she stares at him. “Naegi… If… you’d prefer, I would not be averse to you going back to him.”

“Huh? Didn’t you say you guys needed to talk to me?”

He’d assumed that it meant _Alter Ego_ was calling for them, that maybe he’d found a way to help get the rest of class 77-B out of their comas. For Kirigiri to come all the way out to find him instead of waiting means it has to be important. So then why is she changing her mind? It’s eerily out of character.

She crosses her arms, eyes skittering away from him. “The issue we need to discuss can wait until tomorrow. I should have postponed telling you until then.”

A slither of ice drops into his stomach. So she has bad news. Even though he wants to take her up on her offer so badly it almost drives him insane, he shakes his head. “If something’s happening, I have to know.”

Kirigiri meets his eyes again, solemn and heavy. “You won’t even spend one night away from work now that you know there’s a problem, because you’re… the Ultimate Hope.”

He barely doesn’t flinch, and he knows she can see it in his body language. Ever since he had used that as his explanation for gambling his very existence on saving the Remnants, she's been strange about his title. He's not sure why.

She bows her head slightly and turns away without another word, leading him back to the large ship that had taken them all to the island, where all of their communication tech is. So, it isn’t Alter Ego then. He’s grateful. Bad news from Alter Ego would have been absolutely crushing. That doesn’t leave very many options then, and none of them are good.

It might be Hina or Hagakure - they’d been left on the mainland just in case anything major happened in the outside world or with the Foundation.

Or it could be Toko, but… For her to reach out to them would most likely mean something had happened to Komaru… And if that happened --

He bites the inside of his cheek and forces himself to stop prophesying the myriad of terrible things that _could_ have happened. They still had never located their parents, no matter how hard Komaru searched in Towa City, nor how many times Kirigiri tried tracing their whereabouts. His last known living family member dying fighting despair while he’s living in a little island dream world would be utterly unforgivable.

But Kirigiri wouldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t offer for him to wait to find out. She _wouldn’t._

His breath shudders in his chest, mood sobering entirely as he follows Kirigiri through the darkening evening, desperately hoping for his worst fears to not be realized.

The guards let them go by onto the ship with deep bows. He bows back reflexively even as Kirigiri sweeps past them with nothing more than a slight nod. He follows her sharp footsteps to the communications room and sees Togami cradling his forehead with a cup of dark liquid in front of him. Somehow, he doubts it’s coffee. It's not often that Togami resorts to liquor to soothe himself, but it seems now is one of those times.

Naegi steps into the room and meets Togami's tired eyes. The heir nods at the screen and Naegi reads the short missive on it.

_Naegi Makoto of the 14th division, you are to return to the Future Foundation headquarters immediately upon the receipt of this message. You are hereby wanted for treason, theft of extremely sensitive information and materials, and aiding and abetting terrorists._

_If you do not appear before the Foundation for judgement within two weeks from now, you and the other survivors shall all be classified as terrorists and treated as dangers to society._

_Arrest warrant issued by Munakata Kyosuke, Future Foundation Vice-chairman_

_Authorized by Tengan Kazuo, Future Foundation Chairman_

Naegi reads over the message twice and nods. He's not surprised it's Munakata who issued the warrant in the first place, although he regrets the fact that Tengan got involved in this. Munakata's most likely prepared everything in order to force an arrest and get him away from the public's eye. He's never really liked Naegi for his different methods and how soft his heart is, but Naegi had always considered them on the same side. Munakata apparently did not.

He wishes for a second that this message had come just a day earlier. After all, it would've been much easier to leave this island and go to what very well may be his death - or at the very least his incarceration - if he had not stumbled headlong into an embrace with Kamukura and Hinata. But he can't regret it.

He's loved and lost so many people in his life now, but he can't deaden his heart to yearning for more no matter how much easier it would make things.

Still, breaking the news to them, when they're still figuring things out between themselves… It won't be easy. And it certainly isn't fair. All of the worries he'd had about starting something between them had come true after all. He just hopes they'll forgive him for being selfish and allowing the kiss to happen.

"You're not worried about this at all, are you?" Kirigiri asks, so quiet it’s almost lost among the creaking of the ship. "Not for yourself, at least."

He blinks at her in surprise, turning away from the monitor. "Why would I be? I knew what I was getting into when I started this. I knew Munakata and Tengan and the others would probably despise me for this. And I knew that it might even end in something terrible happening to me… If not from the Remnants, then from the Foundation. I knew."

Togami swallows down the rest of the liquor in his cup at that, and Kirigiri's lips tighten until they're white.

He smiles awkwardly at them. "Guys… You knew too. You're both smarter than me by miles. This was always going to happen. All we can do is try to explain _why_ I did what I did -"

"As if you're the only one who did anything," Togami interrupts with a snarl.

Naegi quickly backtracks from that statement - he hadn't meant to injure Togami's pride. "I didn't mean it like that. You two did so much to help me, and them too, I can never repay you both for what you did! I would never pretend that I could've done this all on my own!"

"Then why are you talking like you're the only one facing punishment?!" Togami barks, slamming his empty cup on the table.

"I mean, isn't it obvious?" Naegi points at the screen. "They only asked for me."

Togami grimaces and stands sharply, heading to a cabinet and pulling out a bottle. He's going to drink more? Naegi opens his mouth to stop him when Kirigiri speaks.

"It's an empty threat," she says coolly, eyes glittering sharply at the email on the monitor. "To lose all of us - to lose you - all in one fell swoop, the world wouldn't take it. They know that. It's hot air. The survivors of the killing game being treated like common criminals by the Foundation would break the public’s trust in them."

"I don't know about that… About it being a fake threat I mean. Munakata would probably love to get rid of… well, me at least. I think he at least tolerates the rest of you," Naegi says in a weak attempt to crack a joke.

Neither of them seem even remotely amused.

“When do we have to go back?” he asks as Togami pours himself another hefty serving of whiskey.

“... In order to make their deadline, we’ll have at most another week here.”

_You’ll have at most another week here, so make it count,_ she means. Now he knows why she suggested that he stay with them, at the beach - every second he’s here, that’s another second of his life wasted, and he may not have much left _to_ waste.

“Okay…” he says, feeling the deadline already racing towards him. “I think I’m going to go get some rest then.”

“Naegi. You only have a week,” Kirigiri stresses.

“Yeah, but there’s no point in worrying them, right? I just want things to be normal. That might be really selfish of me, but I think that if… I give Hinata or Kamukura a chance to stop me, then I won’t be able to leave after all.”

He doesn’t think of himself as being particularly weak-willed, but even he has his limits. In the short time he’s known them, and even in the last hour of having one of his secret desires fulfilled, he’s become extremely fond of the two men. Of course he’d love to stay. Of _course_ he would. And if they asked him to, he just might.

So isn’t it best to just avoid that altogether?

He nods to himself. It’s for the best this way. He bids goodnight to Kirigiri and advises Togami not to drink _too_ much, and he turns away from them and the glaring monitor.

* * *

Hinata’s just finishing washing up in the morning when there’s a knock on his door.

“One minute!”

He pulls out a hair tie from his stash - squirreled away in his room where Sonia and Owari can’t steal them - and quickly pulls back the irritating mass that Kamukura calls hair, checking in the mirror for strays and noticing the lack of shadows under his eyes. For once, his sleep hadn’t been disturbed by night terrors or insomnia, and he’d managed to sleep through the whole night. The lingering exhaustion from the simulation and trauma feel a little lighter.

His mind drifts back to the ocean shore and the warm body against his and his stomach squirms in a mixture of embarrassment - _god,_ Kirigiri really did see them, huh? - and a stupidly warm feeling of giddy happiness.

The memories are incredibly sharp and clear, almost to the point where if he shuts his eyes and focuses on them he can nearly pretend to be there and feel it all over again, skin tingling and warm. It’s like a crisp recording rather than the blurred mixture of mind-melting emotions and sensations mixing together into something liquid and hot, the image defined by Kamukura’s unnaturally sharp senses.

Hinata sucks a breath in through his teeth to wash the memory away. Kamukura’s good for something after all.

He opens the door when he’s sure his face isn’t bright red, which turns out to be a futile effort because he can feel the burning in his cheeks rise right back up when he sees Naegi on his doorstep.

“Good morning,” Naegi smiles brightly, eyes flickering over his face and down his body.

Hinata clears his throat, feeling _very_ warm under the collar. “Morning.”

Naegi accommodatingly moves backwards when Hinata steps out onto the stoop and shuts the door behind him before stepping back into his personal space.

“Uh,” is all Hinata manages before Naegi pushes forward more until Hinata’s back is pressed against the door and his head is being urged downwards by a hand curling around the back of his neck, hazel eyes cutting into him.

The look in Naegi’s eyes is bright and intense and his body is all warm and pressed against him and Hinata’s going to _combust_ from how hot this is. “Is this okay?”

Hinata almost laughs at how stupid of a question that is because why _wouldn’t it_ be okay, but he’s too busy wrapping his arms around the smaller man and slotting their mouths together in an eager, open-mouthed kiss.

Kamukura presses forward insistently in that second, an edge of irritation in him. The sizzling, burning static hisses loudly but Hinata forces down his reflexive urge to push it away. They’re stuck together so he needs to play nice. Kamukura could have easily ripped Hinata away and taken control, but he didn’t. So Hinata swallows down the almost-pain and lets Kamukura curl forward and around him until they’re occupying the same cramped spot.

It frightens and amazes him again how _clear_ the world becomes when he’s seeing through Kamukura’s eyes, feeling the sensations through their shared skin with so much electric force that it’s like static shocks crawling over him rather than somewhat calloused palms.

Naegi’s tongue licks into their mouth and he tastes like mint. Kamukura spends a bizarre half-second swirling dizzily in their mind, murmuring about chemical compounds, thoughts scattering, before he refocuses on the wet heat and responds in kind.

They shudder together when Naegi’s nails scrape over the exposed back of their neck, drags them back down across their jugular and down over their thin dress-shirt. Each line of where his nails trace over feel burning hot, the phantom sensations of it replaying over and over until it feels like his hands are everywhere, touching him all over.

He knows on some level that they’re out in the open and anyone could see them, but he just _doesn’t care_ enough to do anything about that. He just wraps his arms around him and tries to pull him in even closer, until they’re pressing together seamlessly, and -

Kamukura hears a small gasp of surprise and Sonia saying, _“Holy shit,”_ before her footsteps rapidly walk the other way. It echoes around in his head like the reverberation of a gunshot. First in front of Kirigiri and now in front of literal royalty. Sure. It seems like Naegi didn’t hear her though, not with how earnestly he’s responding to Kamukura’s kiss.

_Fuck it,_ Hinata thinks to himself, beating down his embarrassment. She’s already seen them. No point in stopping now, not that Kamukura seems to intend to anyways.

He’s grateful that it’s still early morning, still cool and the weather not stifling, otherwise he’d have been even more disgusting. Already he can feel sweat beading along his forehead and Kamukura’s otherworldly coldness can barely keep them from melting right into a liquid mess that Naegi could drink right down.

Their lips part for a handful of seconds as Naegi’s mouth finds their neck instead, tongue laving over the spot where his nails had dragged over, tracing the vein there. They eagerly urge his head forward, and Hinata wonders dizzily if he’ll suck a bruise into their skin and leave proof there.

He’s not sure if Naegi wants people to know about them or not - it’s too late anyways, not now with Sonia, but Kirigiri had offered to look the other way if that’s what Naegi wanted, but Hinata knows what _he_ wants - what _they_ want, and he really wants a mark.

But the moment passes and Naegi returns to their mouth.

He’s not quite sure how long it is until Naegi finally gives them a break from the torrential sensations overflowing in them, because it’s hard to even _think_ when he’s all tangled up with Kamukura and Naegi like this. He pulls back, tongue flickering out to lick over his wet, reddened lips, and smoothing a hand down their chest. He can feel their muscles twitching ever so slightly under the touch, body feeling far too warm.

Naegi steps back with a smile. “We should go get breakfast before people wonder where we are.”

He stands shakily up from the door, their legs feeling somewhat liquid. Kamukura mentally unwraps them from one another and takes control. Hinata’s almost relieved for it - he isn’t sure how much longer he could’ve taken all of that _feeling._

How Kamukura can handle it, he doesn’t know.

Naegi holds his hand on their walk to the restaurant, skin warm and calloused against his still, something he can feel dimly through their body. He’s talking about Towa City again, where his sister is, and Kamukura is clearly paying attention. Hinata wonders why that is, what it is that he finds so unique to overcome the way he seems so utterly bored with the world, but he can’t blame him either. He finds Naegi fascinating too.

They let go outside and Naegi gives them a last lingering smile before heading up to meet with Togami and Kirigiri. Kamukura cedes control back to Hinata and he sighs contentedly before he follows up at a proper distance.

His contentment vanishes like mist when he meets Sonia’s eyes across the room and she offers him an exaggerated wink and a thumbs up.

* * *

Naegi corners him multiple times that day, sometimes only barely out of sight of one of the 77-B class members or even his own two classmates, pushing them back into a shadow and kissing them deeply and caressing him with an urgency that Hinata and Kamukura answer eagerly.

Kamukura must know when he’s coming, because he’s always sliding into control next to him the instant right before Naegi touches them, but for Hinata it’s always a pleasant if _heart-pounding_ surprise.

He swears Owari had sniffed him after one moment during the afternoon and she’d given him a knowing smirk.

It’s hard to have any pride or embarrassment about it when it’s unbelievably enjoyable though.

In the evening, when the stars are coming out and everyone’s headed off to their cottages to sleep, Naegi pulls them into one final kiss, so soft and gentle that they almost break under it. There’s no urgency this time, just something soft and slow and all too full of that unnamed emotion. They slowly part until all that’s left is the barest pressure of Naegi’s fingertips on his cheek.

“Have a good night, Hinata, Kamukura.”

And then he pulls away, quickly walking back to his own lodging. Hinata’s head spins as Kamukura drips away like rain water, swirling back down and leaving him alone. It’s utter relief having the clarity of the world finally dim back to something he can stomach.

He’s never felt so strung out before, like the top layer of him has been peeled away and left him sensitive and shivering when the warmth of Naegi finally fully leaches off of him. His mouth is tender and his skin is still electric with the ghost of Naegi’s touch roaming over him.

The door shuts behind him and he barely manages to kick his shoes off before collapsing into bed.

“What was all that about?” he asks, half-heartedly pretending to be annoyed at the way his body feels so consumed by the storm of sensations Naegi had showered on them all day. Even without Kamukura being at the forefront of their mind, he’d been so entwined with Hinata all day that the imprints of it still echo around him.

He’s definitely _not_ complaining about the smaller man’s behaviour, because honestly his biggest fear was that one of them would end up regretting it and it would just… become something neither of them talked about, awkwardly avoiding one another. But it just feels sudden.

Kamukura draws away from him at his question.

Hinata frowns. “Do you know?”

_I have my assumptions._

He waits a minute for an explanation, but nothing comes. “You’re a real fucking joy to talk to,” he grumbles and throws an arm over his face.

* * *

The next day, the same routine happens and he’s pretty sure that nearly everyone on the island knows about them making out like teenagers by now because Sonia keeps giving them obnoxiously obvious thumbs ups every single time she sees either of them and Owari’s been making comments about _“so that’s why he never touched my boobs”._

Even worse, Togami and Kirigiri both seem to be playing bad cop with him.

Togami had actually walked up to him at breakfast and said, rather off-handedly, “If someone were to ever break something I was fond of, no matter who that someone is, they would soon find themselves with a bullet through their skulls.” And then walked away.

Kirigiri had been even less subtle somehow. She’d stopped by when they were in the library, looked him dead in the eyes, and promised, “You’ll regret it if you hurt him.”

He’s a little concerned for his continued well-being.

At least Kuzuryu and Souda both still seem dense about it, because he really doesn’t need anymore pestering from his friends.

* * *

The next morning, Hinata stands in front of the mirror in his bathroom with a pair of scissors in one hand. It doesn’t matter if the hack job he manages even looks good, he’s just _sick_ of all of this damn hair! How Sonia and Kirigiri can put up with it, he doesn’t know, and his is even longer than theirs. Ponytails barely save him, and his braiding ability leaves much to be desired, especially when Kamukura immediately removes them in favour of having their hair loose.

But today… He’s going to finally get rid of it all.

He raises the scissors up, admiring the gleaming metal, and opens them up around a clump of hair. Then, against his will, his arms lowers and drops the scissors into the trash.

“Kamukura,” Hinata says, vein pulsing in his forehead from anger. “Don’t do that.”

_You will not cut my hair._

“What the fuck do you even care?” he grinds out. “You don’t care about anything! But now I’m going to touch our hair - _my_ hair - and you’ve got a problem?”

_I have no desire to look as I once did._

“I just want to go back to looking normal and not deal with this -” he gestures at the long _mess_ Kamukura calls hair, “- anymore! And let’s not forget whose body this really is! I have a right to do whatever I want!”

_You are rather confident in your rights over this body,_ Kamukura says with a touch of frost in his tone.

Hinata scowls at himself in the mirror, imagining the inky red swirling somewhere behind his own green eyes, looking inside of himself at Kamukura. It might be his imagination, but he swears he can see the other man inside of him, lingering behind his own face like a spectre.

“Of course I am. This is _my_ body. I should be able to do whatever I want with it, whenever I want.”

_And Hinata_ did _do whatever he wanted with it. But not you._

For a guy who’s usually so blunt with his words, whenever he gets into moods like this it’s all Hinata can do to stop from bashing his head against a wall in frustration. His words are even slimier and more difficult to grasp than Komaeda’s could be, and isn’t that quite the feat?

“In case you forgot, I _am_ Hinata. And you don’t have to rub the surgery into my face every single time we talk about this.”

_You are ‘a’ Hinata._

He really does bang his forehead against the mirror this time, pressing his head against the cool reflection and willing Kamukura to just _say_ what he means.

_What happened to Hinata, when he underwent the surgery?_ Kamukura asks instead of giving him any answers.

Something sour bubbles in his stomach, like the feeling he always had right before a trial, like something much bigger and much stronger than him had been making him dance around for its entertainment. And like a marionette on a string, he had always obediently gone ahead with it, just to scrape by another day.

He hates that feeling, perhaps more than anything else he’s ever felt. Not even the feelings of worthlessness and insecurity from back in Hope’s Peak compares to the sensation of simply being a toy for someone to bat around until they’re tired of him.

Still, he can feel Kamukura waiting for an answer, and he knows it’s time to present evidence.

“He - _I…_ I was repressed. Right? All of my original identity and emotions were -”

_\- removed._

Hinata fights down his reflexive scorn at Kamukura finishing his sentence and shakes his head. “No, that’s wrong. It can’t have been removed. After all -”

_After all, you’re still here._ Why does Kamukura sound so mocking?

“Yes,” Hinata says stiffly. If he’s still here, if the Neo World Program managed to bring him back from the depths of his own psyche, then surely the surgery could not have removed everything. He’s still himself.

_You are here_ now. _But to go so far as to think you are the original Hinata is quite arrogant of you._

Hinata’s breath hisses out of him through gritted teeth, feeling that cold, simple phrase like a vise clamping around his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

_Who am I?_

“You -” Hinata wavers for a moment, feeling the teethed edges of a trap closing in on him. “You’re…”

He stops short when he realizes he doesn’t have a solid answer for that. Who _is_ Kamukura? Where did he come from? If Hinata had been repressed, then does that mean Kamukura is simply something that arrived from the nothingness that the Steering Committee had created inside of him? When they had tried cutting Hinata out, when they’d tried destroying him, then… Kamukura had been born from that abyss.

But if Kamukura was ‘nothingness’, then why does he have desires of his own? He thinks and feels. He seemingly regards both of them as separate entities, not as extensions of one another. So what does that mean?

_When you were in the simulation, when you awoke… What did you remember of yourself?_

His hands curl around the edges of the sink and the trap closes every so slightly, digging into him. “I… I didn’t remember very much. But that’s because… Naegi said that the program hid stuff on purpose. They didn’t want us to remember -”

_They did not want us to remember Hope’s Peak Academy and the Tragedy. But did you remember Hinata’s family’s faces, their prematurely grey hair from stress? Hinata’s childhood friends? Hinata’s family home, one story and small because Hinata’s parents never achieved anything of note? The cat Hinata’s family owned as a pet, who ran away one night and never returned, and how he cried all night when he realized it was most likely dead?_

“I had a cat?” is the first thing to pop out of his mouth and he nearly bites his tongue off trying to clamp his shut before he can say anything else stupid.

_You didn’t remember._

No, he didn’t… And he still doesn’t. Most of his time at Hope’s Peak has become much clearer, and he does vaguely recall some things from his childhood - flashes and snippets of his classroom, of the bus he rode. Like looking at something through a film, all blurred and indistinct.

He’d been grilled by Togami and Kirigiri and all of his friends about his life and his past, and he’d been able to talk about Hope’s Peak enough to satisfy them. Neither he, nor they, had apparently ever noticed how little he spoke about the time before that. He remembers enough to carry a conversation, occasionally remembering fragments here and there to fill in when someone questions him specifically.

But such concrete, important memories? So much of his life that he hadn’t realized was missing until now? He tries to dig inside of himself, tries to force himself to remember -

… He can’t. It remains just out of reach.

So then why does Kamukura remember it all? Kamukura had said to Naegi that through their connection, Hinata had been remembering more and more, but what does that mean? Why does he need the other person in his head at all in order to remember?

There’s only one desperate conclusion he can come to.

“You’re… You’re making it all up,” Hinata accuses shakily, clenching his hands even harder around the ceramic of the sink, feeling bile rising up his throat that he swallows down. If Kamukura had falsified all of that information, then that means Hinata can still be right. “You’re just trying to mess with me.”

Kamukura is quiet. Not in a peaceful way, though. It’s the bloated silence of the firing squad right before they pull the trigger.

Then, like with the memory of Chiaki dying, images and sounds slam into him with the force of a train, barreling him over until he’s sent spinning into the flashes of a life he’s forgotten. A rushing, roaring sound deafens him and --

And Hinata remembers.

He’s with his mother in their tiny garden, watering some plants and watching as a ladybug crawls around in the shade of their small home. The sun is hot and beating down on him, and the smell of earth and green clings to him.

He’s happy, and still too young to know what kind of world he was truly living in.

He’s walking with some friends in school, older now, staring down at the marks on the exam they’d just been given back. Something bitter and ugly is growing in his chest when he sees how poor his grade is - he attends cram school _every day_ even though he knows his parents can barely scrape enough together to afford it. He works himself to the bone, and he still can’t accomplish anything. He knows he can’t bear to show his face to his mother and father, not when he’s failed them yet again. His friends are laughing, care-free, and Hinata almost spits at them with how angry he is. How dare they act so lighthearted when he’s suffering?

He stops speaking to them not long after, unwilling to associate with people who mildly accept their own mediocrity.

His cat runs away that winter, and he spends hours looking for her. When he’s forced to return home, he skips his studies and instead makes a sign advertising that she’s missing. A month later, the signs are weatherworn and no one comes forward with her. His parents mutter something about not needing to buy cat food or pay for vet bills, and he realizes no one cared but him. He goes to bed that night and cries.

He doesn’t get a new pet. He throws himself into his studies with a new frenzy instead of mourning any longer. He learns a sharp lesson: those who are weak die, and no one will weep for them.

He sees Hope’s Peak Academy in the news almost every other day, it feels like. In the newspaper his father reads in the mornings, on the news that his parents watch in the evening, and even online when he’s taking a rare break from studying. A place full of talent. A place deserving of it’s spot under the sun. He looks at his barely middle of the pack grades. He needs to go there.

He needs to become something.

The Steering Committee wants him - _him!_ No one’s ever wanted him over anyone else before. No one’s chosen him above all of the other students before. They’ll give him talent, they say. He’ll sign anything. He doesn’t even bother reading all of the papers. He _needs_ this.

The last time he sees his parents, he’s telling them, “Soon you’ll be proud of me.” They look reserved, almost sad for him. They just don’t understand. Once he has talent - he’ll show everyone what he’s really capable of. He’ll earn his place in this world. He’ll walk under the sun amongst the other Ultimates.

He’s in a dark place underground - there’s a surgery table - he’s lying down and they’re giving him anesthesia and he -

_He_ wakes up again - he - it’s him - he’s awake and he feels bored -

It’s _him._

Hinata vomits, mind rolling dizzily, body feeling as though it’s rocking on a boat in the ocean, world tilting and turning around him. His stomach heaves again and nothing comes up but bile, spattering on the ground. He weakly coughs and spits up the remaining sick in his mouth, hands clawing at the ground in an attempt to steady himself.

The ground?

He blinks blearily past tears and sweat, vision refocusing on the bathroom floor and the mess of vomit nearby. When did he fall? His body is shaking so badly he’s not sure if he can stand again.

“Fuck,” he groans, wiping his mouth.

_Am I making it up?_ Kamukura asks sharply without giving him any time to recover.

Hinata grabs his head and curls up on the ground, wishing for the spinning to just _stop_ already. “I don’t know,” he hisses in pain. “I don’t know!”

_Let us be explicitly clear. Who’s memories were those?_

His stomach rolls. “M-Mine.”

_No. They were Hinata’s. The first one. The original one._

“I _am_ Hinata!”

_If you are Hinata, then why did you not remember those memories? If it is as you claim, and the Neo World Program was repressing them, then you should have reclaimed all of those memories when you awoke. You did not._ I _did. The person who underwent the surgery is the same one who woke up from the surgery._

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asks, breath shuddering in his chest and hot tears building behind his eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

_I am the original Hinata._

The trap slams shut around him, ripping into him. His breath gusts out of him and he can’t quite manage to get his lungs to work again.

_You are a patchwork invention of the Neo World Program. You were created from me, sanitized and scrubbed clean, reverted back to a filtered copy of the person I once was._ You _are the invader in_ my _body._

For a bizarre moment he wonders if he’s back in the simulation - if he’d ever left - because this can’t be real and the world is going dark, splotches of black dotting in his vision just like the glitches had. Maybe all of it was all fake this entire time. A simulation within a simulation and he’s going to wake up and go back to normal and Nanami won’t be dead and he won’t have - Hinata won’t have - gone through that surgery and -

And he’ll still be real.

The world blurs and darkens more, the hot prickle of tears finally tipping over the edge and streaking down his face.

_“You’re Izuru Kamukura,”_ Enoshima had said.

But he’s not. He’s not anything. He’s nothing.

If he could, he’d laugh.

Then, Kamukura nudges him aside with more gentleness than he’d expected and their body starts breathing again, the black spatters of air deprivation slowly vanishing. Hinata numbly allows himself to be pushed back, passively drifting under the water.

Kamukura stands and wipes their face on a towel, turning on the faucet and washing the sick out of their mouth. Then he cleans the mess on the floor while Hinata drifts deeper and deeper.

_Did… Nanami know?_ he asks from within the watery cocoon of their mind. Alter Ego and the Neo World Program had made them both, apparently, but Nanami had treated him like he was a real person. Like he’d been her friend. Did she know? Had she treated him like a friend despite that fact? Or _because_ of it? Because she knew he’d been made to overcome despair. Because she knew _who’d_ made him.

Kamukura doesn’t respond for a moment. Then he says, “I am unsure.”

_How do you not know?_ Hinata feels angry at him, but that anger is overwhelmed by grief for a life he’d thought he’d had, so immense that he could just curl up into a ball and cry and cry until he cried himself away. _Just tell me the truth._

“Your memories from within the simulation are your own. I may be able to observe them, but I did not experience them myself.”

_Stop fucking with me. Please just stop it._

Kamukura actually sighs at him then, like he’s nothing more than a nuisance of a child kicking up a fuss. “Does it matter?”

It does. Of course it does. She’d thrown everything away to save him and the others. She’d been guiding him the entire time, trusting him to find the truth and overcome the despair of the trials and Monokuma - of Enoshima. She’d been the one to save him when he’d crumbled under the weight of reality.

Maybe it doesn’t matter to Kamukura and maybe it didn’t matter to Nanami, but it matters to him. No one _told_ him.

“How cruel of you to disregard her final words to you.”

Hinata wants to strangle him to death. Then he feels a nudging and Nanami’s final words to him start floating back up through the darkness as Kamukura draws them out.

He tries to shut it off when he hears Nanami’s voice say, _“I’m just a part of the game… but you guys aren’t, right?”_

The scene plays out perfectly in his mind’s eye as though he hadn’t tried turning it off at all.

He wonders then if she could take him so easily to that dark, abyssal backroom of the simulation because he’d been born there just like she had been.

Is that why Alter Ego had shown him Naegi’s holographic message? Because his coding was easier to access, more familiar?

And Nanami, she’d said he wasn’t a part of the game, but he _was._ Alter Ego had picked apart Kamukura’s - Hinata Hajime’s - memories, selected a handful of them, and sewn them together into something that they could replant back into the body and who would be left to question them? Who’d even know? The only reason he’s still here is because of a glitch in the system that allowed their simulated selves mesh with their original selves.

If she’d said that, though… maybe she hadn’t known. Or maybe… Maybe she’d said it because she wanted him to keep living. Because he _could_ get out, unlike her.

_“Past Hajime is in the past. He’s not the same Hajime who spent time with me and the others in this world.”_

That’s what Kamukura had basically said too, didn’t he? That the memories from the simulation were _his_ \- the time spent inside had been spent by _him._ Not Kamukura or the original Hinata or anyone else. _He_ did. He’s the one who befriended the bizarre Ultimates he’d been stranded with. He’d been the one to go through the life and death trials. Who’d watched his friends die.

Who’d overcome Enoshima’s despair and his own - _Kamukura’s_ own nihilism.

He’d… overcome Kamukura. The original who should have been able to stop him with ease had been forced to bend and now had to cede part of his own body to him.

_“I think it’s time you finally had confidence in yourself.”_

Was she saying that to him knowing that someday he’d find out the truth and feel as though his entire sense of self was being eroded away?

Hinata looks at the memory of Nanami and he knows that he can’t doubt her, not now that she’d died for him, not when she’d entrusted him so fully to carry her memory on into the future and build a world they could be proud of. She believed him to be a person, whether she knew the truth about him or not.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone he _should_ be doubting.

Alter Ego is a program. Program’s don’t do things because they feel like it, not even ones as advanced as he is. They’re told to do things.

Hinata feels even more sick, and he’s grateful for once not to be in control because if he was he might just puke again. _Then tell me - does Naegi know? Did he do this? Did he have Alter Ego create me?_

Kamukura’s mouth opens then shuts and his head turns to the front door of the cabin. “Ask him yourself.”

And Hinata is shoved back into control as someone knocks on his door.

He doesn’t want to answer it. It takes everything inside of him just to keep standing when he wants to crawl back into bed and hide away from the world until it goes back to normal, but Kamukura doesn’t let him. Hinata steels himself and opens the door with a shaky hand, slowly revealing the man he’s come to care so much for, and who he’d thought cared for him too -

Naegi’s eager smile dims and twists into a concerned frown. “Hinata?”

\- and his stomach roils in protest. He can’t do this - he can’t face someone he trusted like this and suspect him. He turns sharply away from the door swallowing down the rush of saliva and he only barely makes it to the toilet where he collapses and bends over, dry-heaving.

He feels warm palms sliding across his face and pulling his hair out of the way as his stomach tries turning inside out.

The taste of acid coats his tongue when he finally calms, spitting the bile out.

A gentle hand wipes at his cheek and he realizes with a start the he’d begun crying again.

“Are you okay?”

The gentleness in his touch as he soothingly pets his hair out of his sweaty face and dabs away the rest of his tears feels unbearably painful. When he opens his mouth his guts spill out. “Did you know that Kamukura is the real Hinata?”

Naegi blinks. “Huh?”

* * *

Naegi stays quiet as Hinata explains in half-mad ramblings about the things Kamukura had told him and showed him, doubling back on his words and clarifying things when Kamukura nudges him slightly. It must make him sound like a madman but he _needs_ to know.

When he finishes, Naegi looks stunned, and if there is even one thing Hinata believes - or _wants_ to believe about him - it is that Naegi wears his heart on his sleeve. Togami or Kirigiri? He wouldn’t trust them to show their true feelings to him if they knew the truth about this, and he wouldn’t trust himself to know if they were lying. But Naegi… Naegi is raw.

So if Naegi looks stunned, then he’ll believe it.

He has to.

The world has inverted itself today already and he's not sure he can take it again.

If Naegi looked him in the face and told him, _"Yes I knew,"_ then that's one thing. But Naegi lying to him? Hiding it from him? He'd probably just crumble in on himself.

“I see,” he says quietly when Hinata doesn’t go on, just shivers and anxiously crosses and uncrosses his arms. “I know this isn't helpful, but I’m not really sure about any of that… I just helped Kirigiri and Togami set it all up." Then he straightens with a small inhale of air. "But I know who would know!"

Hinata stiffens. “Who?”

“Alter Ego!”

“Oh.” Hinata grimaces, wondering why that didn’t occur to him. “Yeah.”

Naegi stands from where he’d been sitting on Hinata’s bed with a stern, determined expression burning on his face. “Let’s go and figure this out!”

He doesn’t give Hinata a chance to make sure he doesn’t look like shit before grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the cottage. He’s as warm and soft as he’s become used to in their stolen, poorly hidden moments together, and he can’t help but feel a little soothed even though he still feels on the verge of falling apart at the seams.

The weather is as gorgeous as normal. He’d almost been expecting it to rain, or something as equally cliche. Naegi’s hand in his keeps him grounded as they stride across the island. They don’t encounter anyone on the way, thankfully, because his hair is probably a mess and his eyes must be red and his clothing is _definitely_ rumpled.

He drags his free hand through his untied, unkempt hair anxiously as they approach the central hub where all of the sleeping members of class 77-B still lie.

What will Alter Ego tell them?

And what will he do when he hears the truth, whatever that may be?

Naegi stops in front of the door, looking back at him. This is it. They're on the literal verge of the truth, and he's the one who has to take the last step. He tightens his grip around Naegi's hand and feels the responding grasp back, sturdy like a rock in the hurricane of emotions he's being thrown into.

He takes a sobering breath and nods.

The door opens without fanfare and they walk into the dark, enclosed room, the pods glowing faintly and the monitors casting a cold light over them. The monitor closest to them flickers before switching to Alter Ego's face.

Hinata had learned - and eventually 'remembered', thanks to Kamukura - that Alter Ego had been created and based off of one of Naegi's classmates who had died in their killing game. His avatar seems so sweet and gentle, even more than Naegi does, and he doesn't want to doubt one of the beings who worked so hard to save them, but _someone_ must have an answer.

Kamukura tries stopping him for some reason, says, _Hinata,_ in a warning tone, but he ignores it.

Naegi squeezes his hand again and Hinata swallows back his fears. His voice shudders slightly when he asks, "Alter Ego, did you make me inside of the Neo World Program?"

Alter Ego blinks at them, smiling helpfully. "I did."

Hinata almost collapses, knees turning liquid and jelly, only the firm hold on his hand keeping him stuck in place. " _Why_?"

"Because I was instructed to heal you all from despair by reversing your memories to the time before Hope's Peak - but Hinata Hajime, otherwise known as Kamukura Izuru, could not be separated from his memories." Alter Ego's tone is almost robotic in his recitation of his reasoning, before his appearance softens into something reminiscent of the boy who'd made him. "I really tried my hardest… I'm so sorry! But when I realized I couldn't do it, I had to change tactics! So, I made a new Hinata!"

"What the fuck?" Hinata asks no one, knees truly giving out then and sinking him to the floor.

"I used my absolute best programs and data retrieval software to isolate the most key parts of Hinata's identity that would not trigger his true self awakening. And it worked!" Alter Ego brightens, beaming at them. "The new Hinata is perfect!"

Naegi closes an arm around him, pulling him into an awkward hug and someone says, "What the fuck?" and it wasn't either of them.

Alter Ego smiles at Kuzuryu who stalks from around the pillar of computers, staring at Hinata.

Hinata could be sick again. Of course he's here, he's here every single morning to see Pekoyama, and now he knows what a fake he is, and everything's falling apart beneath him.

"What's this about?" Kuzuryu asks irritably. "What the hell are you guys talking about? You're not Hinata?"

"Oh, no!" Alter Ego interjects hurriedly, shaking his avatar's head. "He absolutely is Hinata!"

" _A_ Hinata," he says with a bitter, shaking voice as he leans further into Naegi’s comforting embrace and avoids Kuzuryu's searching gaze. "Who barely knows shit about himself or his life!"

Alter Ego seems confused, a finger tapping at his lips as he hums. "Well, yes you are 'a' iteration of Hinata, and I couldn't copy everything perfectly because once I copied too much then the 'Kamukura Izuru' part began to bleed in and that would defeat the purpose. But you are still _Hinata_ in essence."

"You're saying that like I should just be fine with it!"

Kuzuryu shoves his hands in his pockets and stands right in front of him until Hinata looks at him. "Why aren't you fine with it?

"... Huh?"

"You're alive aren't you? You're still here - even if you're not the original or whatever the hell - and you're still the one we made friends with right? So what's it matter? Are you saying you wish you hadn't made it out?"

"No! Of course I want to live! But I want to be _real!_ "

Kuzuryu scowls, head tilting as he stares imperiously down at him. “So the friendships we made in there weren’t real?! Huh?!”

“That’s not - I’m not talking about that!”

“Yeah, well let me tell you something,” Kuzuryu says, gritting his teeth. “I got to see someone I never thought I would again in there. Nanami… She was just as caring and giving and good as the one who’d died before. Not the exact same, but goddamn it all, AI or not, simulation or not, she was real too! Her dying to save us all, that wasn’t fake! She was our friend in there too! And if she wasn’t fake, then you aren’t either. And if you say you aren’t one more time I’m going to have to beat the shit out of you until you apologize!”

He knows that about Nanami! Even if he isn’t the original Hinata, everything she did for him - he’ll never forget it. But he’s… still…

“Hinata,” Naegi says, petting his hair and cradling his face. “You shouldn’t think about it in black and white terms like ‘fake’ and ‘real’. Alter Ego said himself that you’re still a piece of the original Hinata right? We always knew you two were different people - which one of you came from which shouldn’t matter. We care for you both anyways.”

“I never said I gave a shit about Kamukura,” Kuzuryu protests. “That guy’s a total asshole.”

The look of pure offense on Naegi’s face breaks something in him - because of course _he_ cares, he cares so much about Kamukura and Hinata both that it’s kind of insane - and he just starts laughing.

Kuzuryu takes a few steps forward. “Did he crack?”

Hinata’s brain just… quits. He’s so done worrying about all of this shit. He has friends. He has a body that’s his most of the time, and when it’s not he can’t do anything about it anyways so why worry? Kamukura’s been mostly content just to sit back and enjoy the ride, no more doomsday or armageddon plans. And while, in a way, this revelation absolves Hinata of the crime he committed upon himself - the surgery - he doesn’t feel freed from his actions either.

He’s still himself.

He can leave worrying about the rest of it to people smarter than him.

“Hinata? You okay?” Naegi asks, mouth slightly curved upwards in a mixture of confusion and amusement at his laughing fit.

He stops, breathing a little heavily. “Yeah. I’m good.” Then Kamukura responds almost preternaturally to a thought he _almost_ had, moving their body to drag Naegi down onto their lap. Yeah, he can work with this. “Now I’m even better.”

When Naegi shrugs playfully and decides to go ahead and start kissing him, Hinata and Kamukura faithfully ignore Kuzuryu’s choked, “Oh - shit, uh, I’m - I’ve gotta go. Bye,” and the door slamming shut behind him.

Hinata’s done thinking for today. Kamukura seems perfectly content to agree. He wants to drown himself in the addicting mixture of sensations and enjoy the life he’s been given, and let Naegi drink him down until they’re both drunk on one another.

The fourth day of their relationship is marked by pure hedonism - kissing and holding and lounging together with absolutely nothing pressing to do - and by the end of it he’s almost shaking with pure overstimulation. Kamukura’s perfect senses amplify everything a thousand fold, and then record it and loop it back over and over.

He falls asleep with the feeling of hands and lips caressing him.

* * *

The next morning, after Naegi had done his morning ritual of making out with him against his cottage door, Kuzuryu awkwardly stops him and pulls him aside in the restaurant. It takes a moment for Kuzuryu to work up the courage to say whatever it is he has to say, so Hinata gets himself a cup of coffee and takes a sip.

Kuzuryu scratches the back of his head, knocking his eye patch’s band a little. “Listen, uh. Do you mind telling me if I should worry about sanitizing Alter Ego’s room? No judgement, but I really don’t want to… er… see any _evidence,_ if you catch my drift.”

Hinata inhales his sip and almost chokes to death.

* * *

On the sixth day since they first kissed on the ocean shore, the hammer comes down.

“We have to go back to the mainland tomorrow.”

They’re sitting in Naegi’s room side by side on his bed in one of the abandoned cabanas that one day will be inhabited by a member of class 77-B once they wake from their comas. Each of the three survivors have commandeered one even though they could simply sleep on the ship, but he sees why they would prefer sleeping on sturdy ground, especially Naegi because apparently he gets a little seasick now and then, and -

_Stop avoiding it._

Hinata swallows past the lump in his throat at Kamukura’s clipped scolding. “So you’re leaving?”

Naegi looks at him with eyes so tender and soft that it hurts. He gently takes one of their hands in his, the calluses already fading back into smooth skin over the past week since they’d kissed on the beach.

“The Future Foundation is looking for us, for… Well, you know. I guess it’s about time to face the music for running off with you guys.”

“Fuck them,” he says a little more harshly than he means to. He knows the Foundation has been one of the sturdiest rocks in the hurricane of despair, one of the few things tamping down the world and keeping it from blowing away entirely, but _fuck them._ He’s just begun living again. He deserves more time with this new, fledgling future of his.

“I’m not happy either, but I knew the risks going in,” Naegi smiles.

“Is that why Kirigiri needed to talk to you last week?”

Naegi nods. “I’m sorry for keeping it from you for so long but I just thought it would be harder to leave if I told you right away. I didn’t want to risk you talking me out of it,” he laughs.

Hinata scoffs. “What’re they even going to do? Arrest you? The _Ultimate Hope?_ ”

There’s a small pause, and then, “Well, I just hope they understand why I did what I did.”

Even Hinata feels how off that answer is. How much it doesn’t address. Even as unobservant as he is, he can feel the way Naegi’s hand tenses and how he averts his eyes.

_He is concerned that they may consider his treason worthy of execution,_ Kamukura says.

The world stills for a moment as Hinata tries to force his mind to digest that word, so familiar to him and yet so vile that he rejects it violently. He wants to vomit up every last ounce of familiarity with that word until it means nothing to him again.

_Ex...ecu...tion?_

_The Future Foundation has many factions inside of it jockeying for power. At least one of them is sure to clamour for his death with the desire to fill the void he leaves behind._

Hinata feels a little nauseous, flashes of his friends’ executions bursting behind his eyes in bloody colour. His brain freezes on Nanami’s execution, skipping like a broken record until he’s sure he’s blue in the face from how _sick_ he feels. “B-But it’s not like it was just you, right? Kirigiri and Togami both -”

Naegi shakes his head with a wry smile. “Ahh, it’s for the best if we just pin it all on me, right? Like you said, I’m their Ultimate Hope. It’s more likely for me to get away with it than them.”

“Aren’t they higher ranked than you? How does that make any sense?!”

Naegi laughs again. “I guess it doesn’t, really. But that’s how it is. Even the missive that we received from the Foundation only demanded my return. Togami’s planning on going back to his branch. Kirigiri and maybe some of the others will come with me as a gesture of peace. I think that’s for the best. Togami would probably just piss them off.”

_Togami Byakuya is their rescue operation. He can operate from the outside without the Foundation’s influence if things go poorly._

That’s a pale reassurance. If they’re already planning for something awful to happen, then…

If he dies -

Hinata doesn’t want to know if he can stomach losing another person this dear to him. Whether he’s fake or real or both or neither it doesn’t even matter anymore. He knows how he feels. He knows that it’s real.

Kamukura simmers inside, coating the inside of him with something thick and dark and writhing and angry. He stood by and allowed Nanami to die once before, the person who he’d once cared for and who had cared for him, and he’d done nothing about it. He’d simply watched as her murderer waltzed off as though it had been her right to kill Nanami.

And that once was enough.

Kamukura’s presence rises inside of him with a dark promise that no one would be left standing if it happened again. Hinata sees the thousands and thousands of dead bodies left in the wake of the Ultimate Hope - the Ultimate Despair, and for once he doesn’t feel revolted.

If Naegi dies, the Future Foundation would witness exactly what a spurned Hope can create with all of the fiery determination of the resurrected, recreated Hinata mixing with the frigid focus of Kamukura Izuru.

Hinata almost feels frightened of himself when his heart hardens and he _knows_ that he would do it. Kamukura wouldn’t need to force him to do anything. Hinata would work with him, step by step, until it’s all over and they’re drowning in blood.

Only a few weeks of knowing Naegi and he’s been ruined.

Is this because of Kamukura’s influence over him? Is his easy acceptance of this bloody reaction to a potential future an echo of the _real_ Hinata he’d been made from?

… Does it _matter?_

No matter why he feels this way or which one of them this immense well of feelings comes from, it doesn’t change anything. This is his life now. He’s found the future he wants, the future he and Kamukura and Naegi all deserve, and he’ll never forgive the world if it crumbles yet again. Naegi might hate him for it, but what would that matter if he was dead?

“Don’t go back.”

Naegi breathes out a small laugh, eyes curving and gleaming at him with a bittersweet sort of joy. “This is what I was trying to avoid. I have to face the consequences of my actions, Hinata. Don’t worry - it’ll be okay. I’ll make them understand. Kirigiri has so many notes on your behaviour and Alter Ego gave us all of his data too. If they let us talk, we have the evidence to prove you guys aren’t as dangerous as you were. You’ve all gotten _better._ Just believe in us a little, okay?”

“I’m scared,” he confesses weakly.

Scared that the worst will happen. Scared of himself and what he’ll do when it does.

Naegi’s smile softens more. “Even if the worst does happen, you’ll all be okay. Togami will make sure of it. He’s got a lot of connections inside and out of the Foundation. He’s not going to let them find you guys.”

He’s missing the point. They _will_ be okay. But the Future Foundation won’t.

Naegi must see his fear and anger and frustration, and he pulls Hinata’s head down to cradle it in the soft, warm spot between his neck and shoulder, hugging him like he’s simply an inconsolable child. He keeps talking, offering empty reassurances and platitudes, but Hinata can’t accept his words.

_Will he be safe?_ he asks Kamukura. If anyone would know, it’s him.

Kamukura is silent as he thinks. When he eventually answers, it’s not the response he was looking for. _I do not know. His Luck talent spans beyond simple prediction. That is part of why I find him so intriguing. I will say this: his talent is skewed very strongly towards bad luck._

“That’s not what I want to hear,” he hisses outloud unintentionally, cutting Naegi’s words into silence.

“I’m sorry,” Naegi says, hugging him tighter. “What can I do to make this easier?”

The worst thing is he can _hear_ the apology dripping off of his words and Hinata can’t even be upset with him. He wants to get angry, and claw into something that he can blame, but he can’t. And he knows he can’t just go with him. Bringing a Remnant of Despair, possibly reformed or not, to this meeting would be like bringing a nuke to peace negotiations.

"There's nothing you can do," Hinata answers with a weak laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Don’t be. Just… I get it. Okay? I get it, but I don’t have to be happy about it.”

“No, I didn’t expect you to. And I’m not either. But I’m still… just so glad that I was able to meet you both. And that we were able to have this, at least for awhile.”

Hinata grabs him tightly, pressing as hard against him as he can until he can pretend to feel his heart beat through their clothing. “Don’t talk like you’re a dead man, asshole. You’re coming back.”

Naegi strokes his hair silently, running his fingers through it with a calm, soothing rhythm. He notices the lack of a response, but he just feels so _tired,_ and doesn’t bother pressing the issue.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he says, muffled against Naegi’s shoulder.

Naegi hums in agreement.

Kamukura takes over, the switch easy and smooth after how frequently it’s happened during the week, even easier now that Hinata’s stopped subconsciously resisting it because of his mistaken identity. It’s almost nice not to have to worry about what the fuck to say or feel for a minute. He raises their head and meets Naegi’s eyes.

“Kamukura, you’re not going to tell me to stay too, are you?”

He stares at Naegi for a moment before splaying a hand onto his chest, urging him to lay out on the bed. Naegi obeys, watching him curiously. Hinata’s curious too, and a little reluctant. He knows Naegi should probably get some rest because he doubts he’ll have a very smooth sailing back with the Future Foundation hanging over his neck like a guillotine, but he doesn’t want to waste this last night together.

_Not_ last, he scolds himself, just a break, a hiccup in their relationship -

Then Kamukura straddles his hips and rests a hand on his belt and the mood in the room changes from defeated sadness into something heated and tense. Hinata would choke on his spit if he had the ability to, and he can see the matching colour rising in Naegi’s cheeks.

“Well?” Kamukura asks.

Naegi’s mouth drops open and he doesn’t speak for a few seconds, eyes flickering from where their bodies are meeting and back up to their face, before stuttering, “I-If Hinata’s okay with it -”

_Yes! Fuck, yes! Tell him I say -_

“- yes!” he finishes aloud, voice too loud and too eager but he doesn’t care.

That’s all Naegi needs to palm over his chest and hurriedly undo the buttons of his shirt, Kamukura manoeuvering his belt off with much more grace than Hinata could ever be able to muster in the same situation.

If their stolen moments before were enough to take his breath away and send him spiralling and melting with the immense well of feelings and sensations, then this is enough to make all of that pale in comparison. There are no more calluses on his palms as he strokes over their skin. Kamukura easily conforms to him, meeting Naegi's wants before he can even ask, and Hinata doesn't even particularly care what he has them do, he just _wants._

His touches feel branding, searing, and this time Naegi’s teeth meet their skin with the desire to mark. Even without Kamukura’s immaculate memory he knows that he’d never forget a second of how it feels.

He’s burning away - he wants to melt right into him until Naegi’s consumed every last ounce of him and nothing can take them away from one another -

And he swears he genuinely blacks out by the end, swallowed whole by the bottomless pit of pleasure Naegi creates inside of them, unable to _think,_ unable to do anything except helplessly accept the uncontrollable feedback loop of excruciating levels of pleasure. He can feel it in Kamukura too, this frazzled, fraying sense of lost control until the storm of thoughts just _stops._

Naegi pets their hair away from their face and messily kisses over it, whispering more little nothings and promises and sweet words and Hinata can’t even hear him over the rushing sound of blood in his ears.

“I’ll come back. I’ll come back.”

They can’t find any words inside of themselves, simply wrapping him into a simple embrace and cradling them against their chest.

Sleep comes before they can stop it, and they rest dreamlessly.

* * *

Hinata slowly awakens to a solid weight on his chest and a pleasantly thorough ache in his body. One of his arms is pinned and going a little numb and through bleary eyes he sees a head of messy brown hair and he remembers with a start the night he’d just shared with the man sleeping on top of him.

_So that wasn’t a dream,_ he thinks bittersweetly. He doesn’t regret the night - of course he doesn’t. Nor does he wish it hadn’t happened, but if that’s real then that also means that fact he’s leaving is still real too.

He blinks hard to keep his eyes from growing too wet, and he swears to himself to hold onto Naegi until he’s forced to let go. It won’t be long until he wakes up and needs to collect his things from his own cottage and get onto the Foundation’s ship and head back to face his judge, jury, and executioner.

Kirigiri and Togami aren’t stupid people. They have allies of their own who will help them when the shit inevitably hits the fan because Naegi’s luck is just _like that._ But besides knowing they’re capable people there’s nothing he can do except hope - and isn’t that just a piss off. He’d sworn to take his future into his own hands and he’s still left waiting to see if it’ll be torn away from him or not.

He _has_ to believe that Naegi will be fine. That a few weeks down the road they’ll see the ship coming back over the horizon and he won’t be kept away again. That they’re going to have as many more nights like this as they want, and as many mornings where they can wake up holding him.

If not… He just hopes there’s enough bodies in the Foundation to satiate the anger already brewing under his skin, stoked by Kamukura’s own violent promise.

He tries not to think about it. He can’t think about it, not when he’s holding someone who would be so disappointed to hear their bloody thoughts.

Kamukura joins him silently and they hold him together as the sun slowly rises outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hinata/Kamukura thing... I wanted to explore that idea and this fic seemed great for it. I might be playing a little fast and loose with sdr2 but hey what're AUs for.
> 
> I kind of want to write more in the vein of this AU, in particular: a rewrite of the Hope arc and maybe some short fics about Kamukura interacting with 77-B (also about Souda being the last one to realize, oh hey hinata and naegi are a thing). I just think it might be funny. We'll see though. My brain is fried.
> 
> as always please lemme know if you liked! I'm proud of this one


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